VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

Nearly two decades of modern heritage conservation in Hong Kong shows that the success or failure of preserving a modernist building does not depend on its design quality, but is largely decided by the game between various stakeholders. From the perspective of social mechanism, our research studies the interplays between stakeholders such as government agencies, the public, NGOs, and professional bodies in the conservation processes and social debates revolving around the conservation and revitalisation of modernist architecture. Five public buildings constructed around the 1930s and 1950s in Hong Kong are selected, all of which were considered the carriers of the collective memories by the public and fine examples of modernist architecture by some scholars, yet each was taken to a different path of conservation. Our review suggests that, although provided with an intricate grading system for historical buildings, the main thrust of conserving modernist architecture in HK comes from the public, especially the NGOs. The succession events starting from the budding of public awareness of conserving modern heritage in HK triggered by the demolition of Star Ferry Piers in Central in 2006 to the successful campaigns of persevering the former Central Government Offices compound in 2012, reveals a learning curve of the stakeholders to tackle issues specific to modern heritage in a cooperative mode. This paper further advocates that the design values of modernist architecture should be recognised as the key consideration in the process of conservation and revitalisation by the whole society.