Herzog & de Meuron have proposed a towering addition to Hong Kong's Central Police Station Compound, including an auditorium, recital hall, two theaters, and observation deck. Despite the transparency of the design, it is being met with strong opposition from preservationists. via Dezain. Photos after the jump...
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To my *shallow* knowledge, the 'preservationists' are mainly composed of: people who bought their expensive apartments behind the latticework, local architects who repel any foreign works (they are yet to produce anything radical and interesting except Rocco Yim), and anti-government teens who recently got introduced to this preservationist concept and decided to go all black and white about the issue.
It would be a shame for Hong Kong to miss this chance again. The city is deserted with new and exciting architecture in the recent decade, ever since I.M. Pei's Bank of China and Foster's airport. All the other public facilities and museums by the harbor were designed by crappy government architects, which is a shame.
Luckily this is a privately-held project so this will probably be approved, unlike the disastrous West Kowloon canopy turmoil.
Those renderings seem misleading, and i suspect much more aggressive than the design intent; regardless, H&dM's projects always look better constructed. their renderings always fail to capture their materials and detailing.
now THAT is ugly.
it appears that most of the building is down low and that there is a lot of superfluous structure only serving to get access to observation decks of some sort. i'm going to have to find out more about this to know what i think about it, but is there any function beyond 'landmark' up in those crenellated areas?
and do they not know what the top looks like yet? all the video and renderings seem to leave that part out...
whenever I see new project by HDM it looks more similar to OMA..
The lattice work reminds me of the metal scrap form the twin towers at ground zero.
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