Can Hong Kong’s Central harbourfront be more than prime real estate?
The city’s most valuable site is estimated to sell for US$10.2b, but yet no user-friendly plan has been put forward to turn the harbourfront into a place to rival Sydney or Stockholm
Kacey Wong was sitting on a bench along the Central harbourfront watching a TV crew turn a sculpture into the set of a chat show. To his right were installations by Antony Gormley, Yayoi Kusama and other world-renowned sculptor-artists. Wong’s own works were to the left: a collection of six wireframe sculptures called Asteroids and Comets.
“It’s a real sculpture park – large objects on grass with blue skies,” he said. “That’s rare in Hong Kong.”
The Harbour Arts Sculpture Park lasted for seven weeks this year (February 22 to April 11) as an Arts Centre initiative to bring top-notch public art to the shores of Victoria Harbour – an unprecedented exhibition in a city where quality public art is still rare. The space itself is rare, too. Less than 40 per cent of the harbourfront is even accessible to the public, and this particular spot – reclaimed from the sea just over a decade ago – retains the feeling of an interstice: a leftover patch of earth caught between the towers of Central and the busy waters of the harbour.
Being here on the harbourfront, with the government’s daunting headquarters in the background and gleaming skyscrapers beyond that, it was making him think of the origins of Hong Kong. There has never been a sculpture park on the waterfront before because, until now, there has never been space for it. “Every problem in Hong Kong is a property problem,” he said.
Just past Wong’s sculptures, crowds were assembling for the latest edition of Art Central, which takes place in a temporary event space that has played host to music festivals and carnivals. A Ferris wheel rises in the background, next to a weedy vacant lot, and a bit further along the water, there are ferry piers, a bus terminus and the entrance to a new underground expressway that will bypass Central and Wan Chai. It’s a collection of urban detritus – asteroids and comets left over from the cosmic churn of Hong Kong property development.
Jewel in the crown
And it’s Hong Kong’s last, best hope for a great waterfront to rival those of Stockholm, Sydney and San Francisco.
“The Central harbourfront is the jewel in the crown,” says Nicholas Brooke, chairman of the Harbourfront Commission, which advises the government. Although less than half of the of the harbour’s 73-kilometre shoreline is accessible to the public, he expects that will soon change, as 50 of those kilometres are controlled by the government. “Because of that we have the opportunity to do something very special.”