Hong Kong Architecture & Design: the back story

About Hong Kong Architecture & Design: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Hong Kong Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Few cities show their history so clearly in their skyline. Within a few minutes’ walk of Statue Square stand three towers that each changed how Hong Kong builds, and around them the city has learned to stack its galleries, museums and design studios into the same tight, steep streets. Here is the story behind the buildings, and how to see them well.

Three towers in Central

Stand in Statue Square and look up. Three of Hong Kong’s most important towers stand within a short walk of each other here, and together they tell the story of how the city learned to build tall with style.

The HSBC Main Building at 1 Queen’s Road Central came first. Its design was chosen through an international competition won by Norman Foster, then of Foster Associates, and the building officially opened on 7 April 1986, replacing the bank’s 1935 headquarters on the same site. The tower is lifted clear of the ground, so the street-level plaza beneath it belongs to the public, and you can walk right through, under the great exposed steel frame. At the entrance, the bank’s two bronze lions, Stephen and Stitt, still keep watch.

In Hong Kong the land runs out long before the ambition does, so the city builds up: banks, galleries and even its art market live in the sky.

A few steps away, the Bank of China Tower answers it in glass. Designed by the Chinese-born architect I. M. Pei, it was begun in April 1985 and officially opened in May 1990. With its two masts it reaches 367.4 metres over 70 floors, and its faceted glass, braced by bold diagonals, catches the light differently from every angle. See it from Garden Road, or from the Star Ferry as you cross the harbour.

The newest of the three is The Henderson on Murray Road, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. Its 36 storeys of curving glass take their form from a bauhinia bud about to bloom, the flower that once grew near the site, and the building is the Asia-Pacific headquarters of the auction house Christie’s. Walk round it to see how the glass seems to fold and open as you move.

Galleries in the sky

With so little level ground, Hong Kong’s art market has moved upstairs. On Queen’s Road Central, H Queen’s was built for it: a tower of 24 floors whose architect, William Lim of CL3 Architects, gave the gallery floors an external gondola and an opening curtain wall so that large works can be lifted straight in from the street. David Zwirner occupies the fifth and sixth floors.

Round the corner in the Pedder Building on Pedder Street, Gagosian’s Hong Kong gallery is on the seventh floor, open Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 7pm. Galleries move and change often in Central, so check each one’s website before you set out. For the industrial galleries of Wong Chuk Hang, on the south side of the island, see our arts and culture back story.

Old walls, new blocks

Not everything here is new. Up the hill on Hollywood Road, Tai Kwun brings together the former Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison: three Declared Monuments, with sixteen historic buildings conserved around their yards. When the compound reopened in May 2018 as a centre for heritage and the arts, Herzog & de Meuron added two new buildings, JC Contemporary and JC Cube, wrapped in cast-aluminium bricks that echo the old prison walls. In 2019 the project received the Award of Excellence in the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation.

West Kowloon

Across the harbour, on reclaimed land at the tip of the Kowloon peninsula, the West Kowloon Cultural District is the city’s great new cultural quarter. M+, by Herzog & de Meuron with TFP Farrells and Arup, opened in November 2021 as an upside-down “T”: a broad podium of galleries and a slender tower whose façade is one of the world’s largest LED screens, showing artworks on the skyline every evening. The Airport Express tunnel runs beneath it, and the architects dug around it to make the Found Space, a raw gallery where you can sense the trains below.

A short walk east, the Hong Kong Palace Museum, by Rocco Design Architects Associates under Rocco Yim, opened on 2 July 2022. Inside, three atriums stacked on a vertical axis echo the central axis of the Forbidden City. Come at dusk, when the waterfront park fills with walkers and the towers of Central light up across the water.

The design calendar

November belongs to design. Business of Design Week, organised by the Hong Kong Design Centre, runs from 16 to 21 November 2026, with its summit from 18 to 20 November at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre; this year’s partner country is Switzerland. In spring the art world arrives for Art Month: Art Basel Hong Kong runs from 25 to 27 March 2027, and Art Central from 24 to 28 March 2027 on the Central Harbourfront. Book hotels early for both weeks.

Singapore has taken the opposite path: rather than glass and steel, its newest towers are wrapped in gardens. If you are travelling on through Asia, our guide to Singapore’s green architecture makes the perfect companion read.

Our advice

Start early in Statue Square, while the light is low and the streets are quiet, and walk the three towers before the office crowds arrive. Spend the afternoon in the galleries of Central and at Tai Kwun, checking opening days before you go, then take the Star Ferry across to West Kowloon to watch the M+ façade come alive after dark.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Hong Kong Architecture & Design: the back story before you go.