Pok Fu Lam heritage site will be swamped by new development

There is some dismay at the design of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business that is being planned for the Victoria Road ex-detention centre in Pok Fu Lam. The heritage site comprises three grade-three historic buildings.

"The school wants to preserve the history of the site," said Gavin Tun, the director of project management at the university.

However, looking at the artist impressions of the site, which can be seen on the Town Planning Board's website, you would not have thought so. The historic buildings appear to be completely swamped by new buildings.

The executive summary lodged with the board says the development will "strive to conserve the existing structures on site as much as possible via adaptive reuse. Notwithstanding, the applicant has strived strenuously to minimise the scale of development and thus impact upon the surrounding environment without compromising the operational requirements of the university".

Nevertheless, the development is a big building and will clearly change the nature of the environment. It is clearly nonsense for the application to say the development will not have an adverse "visual" or "heritage impact". It will obviously block views of the sea from the road. This is despite being insisted by the developer that "the ribbon contour blends into the contour of the hillside". The application talks of building an elevated structure that "will float atop the existing heritage structure". So it will obviously affect the historic buildings.