Architecture of Hong Kong - European Architecture

European Architecture

Meanwhile, the British introduced Victorian and Edwardian architecture styles from the mid-19th century onwards. Notable surviving examples include the Legislative Council Building, the Central Police Station and Murray House. One building that has since been demolished was the Hong Kong Club Building; it was built atop a smaller structure designed in Italian Renaissance Revival style in 1897. The building was the subject of a bitter heritage conservation struggle in the late 1970s, which ultimately failed to save the building.

The first building in Hong Kong to be classified as the first high rise was constructed between June 1904 and December 1905. It consisted of 5 major buildings, each stacking 5 to 6 stories high. The structures were raised by the Hong Kong Land company under Catchick Paul Chater and James Johnstone Keswick.

Most high rise buildings to be built afterwards were for business purposes; the first true skyscraper in Hong Kong was built for HongkongBank in 1935, which was also the first building in Hong Kong to have air conditioning; however this has since been replaced with the HSBC Main Building, Hong Kong of 1985. Likewise the few examples of 1930s Streamline Moderne and Bauhaus architecture in Hong Kong, such as the Central Market and the Wan Chai Market, are facing imminent demolitions despite protests from heritage conservation groups.

In the residential sector, multi-story buildings did not appear until the Buildings Ordinance 1955 lifted the height limit of residential buildings. This change was necessitated by the massive influx of refugees into Hong Kong after the Communist revolution in China in 1949, and the subsequent Shek Kip Mei slum fire in 1953. Public housing estates, originally seven-storeys high with notoriously cramped conditions, public bathrooms and no kitchens, were hastily built to accommodate the homeless; meanwhile private apartments, still tightly packed into city blocks like the Tong Lau of old, had grown to over 20 stories high by the mid-1960s.

The private housing estate began in 1965 with Mei Foo Sun Chuen. The first major private construction came from Swire properties in 1972 with the development of middle-class estate of Taikoo Shing. With little space wasted on statues or landmarks that consumed unnecessary real estate, Taikoo Shing's design was the new standard.