Historic Hong Kong post office HQ to be demolished as part of prime harbourfront development, but some architects want to save it

After serving Hong Kong for almost half a century, the city’s post office headquarters standing in the heart of Central will be demolished to make way for a prime commercial development.

But some architects believe the iconic building can be saved while still being part of the development, and are suggesting various ways to repurpose it.

Built in 1976, the General Post Office could be lost under a land sale plan to transform the newly reclaimed harbourfront to provide upmarket office space, a sizeable public area, and a mix of hotel and retail facilities. Mail operations will be moved to Kowloon Bay by 2023. 

Plans for the demolition have angered heritage enthusiasts, who argue that the GPO, a five-storey block which boasted modern mailing facilities when it first opened, is worth conserving because of its unique post-war modernist design, and its strong historical ties to the city’s postal service and reclamation development. 

Developers are required to submit their bids for the prime site, known as New Central Harbourfront Commercial Site 3, by Friday. A “two-envelope” approach will be used to vet the bids based on both design merits and premium offers, giving both equal weighting. The proposal with the highest combined score will win.

Property analysts have valued the site at between HK$40 billion (US$5.12 billion) and HK$60 billion.

Repeated calls to save the post office have been ignored by the government over the past few years, as officials said preservation would undermine the overall development potential of the site.

When Hong Kong’s old General Post Office made way for a modern building on Central reclamation

Although the architects are not optimistic that their proposals will be accepted, they hope to raise awareness of their ideas to developers before the tender is concluded, given that their proposals are able to match the gross floor area requirements.

“You can still develop the site while conserving the post office. They are not mutually exclusive,” Charles Lai Chun-wai, an architectural historian, said.

Lai, who works for architectural organisation Aona, suggested some areas of the GPO could be converted into a cultural or exhibition space to educate the public about the city’s postal history. 

“Taking into account the commercial development, there’s quite a lot of commercial floor space and a shopping centre. Some space should be dedicated for cultural use,” Lai said.

He noted that the post office used to be located at the seafront and was reliant on vessels to collect mail and parcels, until reclamation work left it inland.

The building could be extended to include a “sunken plaza entrance”, Lai said, or it could function as an open space for the public and pay tribute to the building’s maritime links. Underground spaces beneath it could also be created for shops. 

Lai said keeping the post office would not result in a loss of gross floor area allowed for the new development. The plaza and other extensions of the building could account for some 28,000 square metres of gross floor area, he noted.

Under the land sale plan, developers can build in separate blocks with a maximum commercial gross floor area of 150,000 square metres, and a public open space of no less than 25,000 square metres.

Adrian McCarroll and Ricky Liu, from architecture firm Original Vision, want the GPO to be used as a “connection point” to other prominent sites in the harbourfront area, linking it with walkways to sites such as the Central MTR stations, the Star Ferry Pier and future office buildings.

In another proposal, Eric Ho and Rick Lam from Architecture Commons suggested the Site 3 development area become civic spaces for the public. 

“The new Central waterfront should be a place to house a diversity of civic spaces for all kinds of citizens for all kinds of activities,” they said.

The pair also suggested rezoning parts of the site, including the GPO, as cultural and heritage spaces.

Hong Kong heritage officials reviewing some 6,000 buildings that ‘deserve another look’

When the plan to demolish the post office was first revealed, there were calls in the community to save it. However, the Antiquities Advisory Board opted not to accord any grading to the GPO after conducting an appraisal, which came after an earlier decision that buildings constructed in 1970 or later would not be assessed.

Ivan Ho Man-yiu, an architect appointed to be a technical adviser for the land bid, was not keen on the ideas for conservation that had been put forward.

“It seems that nowadays when we think of preserving anything, we think of converting it to a museum,” he said. “But with technology nowadays, actually many museums are going virtual … For physical museums, I am not sure what it will end up like in the future.”

According to Ho, the requirement to demolish the building was listed as a condition of sale, which the government underlined in its reply to the architects earlier this month.

The demolition of the old Star Ferry Pier under similar circumstances in 2006 caused a huge public outcry. Built in 1958, the pier was also torn down to make way for new harbourfront developments.

As part of the land sale conditions, the future developer will have to reconstruct the old Star Ferry Clock Tower close to its original location, in hopes it will become the focal point at the new harbourfront and maintain a visual connection with the harbour.