Fear of Mishmash

In what was supposed to be the biggest story of the week, the government rolled out three plans for the West Kowloon district created by premium top-shelf architects (and Rocco Yim), for the public to choose from.

Yet, oddly, reactions have been far from jubilant. Could it be that the public has become inured to the whole concept of developing West Kowloon into some kind of mega-über-ultra-Voltron-arts-complex-cum-express-rail-link-to-the-future? Possibly.

More likely the cleverer members of the populace have, after years of training thanks to our property developer friends/overlords, come to distrust the little perfect models people from on high present on some fancy table. If Sun Hung Kai can’t even set up a 400-square-foot model flat without severely bending the laws of physics “Inception”-style, how are we going to trust anyone to present an accurate scaled-down model of an entire 40-hectare district?

Nevertheless, the three big guns tried. You can see a rundown of the plans on p.14, but here’s the quick and dirty for busy people: His Highness Sir Lord Darth Norman Foster of the Sith’s plan is the one with the forest-looking thing (not pictured: “no touching the trees or grass or having fun” signs); the Koolhaas guy came up with three “village” clusters; and Rocco’s is the boring one.

They each have their merits, and the public is free to comment on them now. But bear in mind the government has already purchased the copyrights of all three, so no matter what you think, civil servant stooges can cherry-pick whatever they like from any of the plans to create their own.

Conspiracy theorists may postulate that officials will create an amalgamated plan that serves as little more than a fancy cover for a plot ratio favorable to the big developers. But most everyone else is outraged that the officials will end up making a ham-fisted “mishmash” of the three genius designs, thus perverting the original aim of the visionaries who created them.