Excessive building codes 'may ruin' Central Market

Japanese master architect Arata Isozaki has appealed for Hong Kong buildings officials to relax certain codes to save his design for the historic Central Market.

Isozaki, 82, who was in town yesterday to unveil the design with the Urban Renewal Authority which is in charge of the project, said bureaucrats' insistence on more fire-escape stairways would compromise his work. "I understand every city has its own planning rules," Isozaki said through an interpreter.

"But [too many stairways] would ruin the architecture and the space. It will also make the building inconvenient to use."

The project, dubbed Urban Floating Oasis, will turn the 74-year-old Bauhaus structure into a complex of arts and culture venues and affordable eateries, opening in about 2017.

Teaming up with local architectural firm AGC Design, Isozaki proposed adding a glass box-like structure on top of the market to create more space and to make an old-and-modern contrast.

The addition would serve to emphasise the horizontal nature of the Bauhaus architecture prevailing in Hong Kong and around the world in the 1930s, as opposed to the later pursuit of height and skyscrapers, he said.

The team wants to make use of the existing escalator system that links the second floor of the market to surrounding blocks as fire-escape routes, in an effort to limit the number of new, intrusive stairways, which run from the roof to the ground, to four.