Hong Kong in 2050: artificial islands, new look apartment buildings and 'urban living rooms' says architecture forum

Modern Hong Kong is a reclaimed city, a quarter of its developed land confected from Victoria Harbour. Will that hold us in good stead when climate change causes sea levels to rise, or leave the city more vulnerable? And, with more of us are packing into the city, how will urban planners house the masses if conventional building design no longer suffices?

SEE ALSO: ‘Rising sea levels will only happen around 2100, by then we’ll all be dead’: a surprising view from Hong Kong at Paris climate summit

Moreover, can you imagine Central’s Des Voeux Road becoming pedestrian-only? And can you foresee a time when air pollution so shrouds that light becomes the new currency? Our creative community certainly can.

All these scenarios, and more, feature in this year’s urbanism and architecture biennale, held jointly with Shenzhen, which invites Hongkongers to explore the future development of their city through three months of exhibitions, video presentations and lectures.

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Hong Kong-based architect Yutaka Yano, co-founder of design studio Sky Yutaka and one of the biennale’s curators, said it was an important cultural event that gave citizens a forum to think about the future of Hong Kong from both an international and a local perspective. Contributors include academics, businesses, architects, planners, ecologists, fashion and product designers, filmmakers, photographers and students.

MAP Office, a multidisciplinary studio co-founded by artists and architects Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix, is mounting an exhibition, “Hong Kong Is Land”, that proposes building eight artificial islands. The exhibit, shown this year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was inspired partly by the effect of global warming on the world’s coastal communities, Portefaix said, and partly as a solution to Hong Kong’s pressing need for more usable space.

Its scenarios – some real, some fictional – include the Island of Land, a mobile territory based on the floating villages of oyster farmers and fishing families once common across Asia and still found at Lau Fau Shan and High Island in Hong Kong.

Another, the Island of Memories, preserves the digitally recorded stories of modern existence – images, texts, passwords – and projects them into the landscape. “A person’s life is contained on a memory chip that is added to the top of the mountain,” said Portefaix, the point being to create “a collective memory of a world in search of a peaceful sanctuary”.

The Island of Resources, in the middle of Victoria Harbour, is envisaged as a place of immediate supply in case of emergency. Stocked with commodities and “goods of all kinds”, it stands ready to provide food and medicine for people traumatised by natural disaster, such as an earthquake or tsunami.