- Email: [email protected]
The architect in transitional Hong Kong
0197-3975f91%5.oll+ 0.00 @ 1992PergamonPresspie
Vol. 15, No. 3, PP. 11-17.1991. Printed in Great Britain.
~AB~~A~~~~~.
The Architect in Transitional Hong Kong* KIT HAFFNER Hong Kong Institute of Architects, Hong Kong
I suppose that the Territory of Hong Kong, consisting of the two closely interrelated cities of Victoria (better known as Hong Kong, confusingly the same as the island on which it stands and the whole territory) and Kowloon and a number of satellite towns in the New Territories, is one of the fastest changing conurbations in the World. Its population is fast approaching six million, making it larger than many countries, yet it lies cm the southern shore of China, and the large population of Hong Kong fades into insignificance in numerical terms even in comparison with some single Provinces of that vast country. THIRTY YEARS AGO
When I arrived in Hong Kong, which was exactly 30 years ago today, the north waterfront of the island consisted of three- and four-storeyed offices and shops built from the mid-Nineteenth Century onwards. There were only two exceptions which were modem concrete structures of about 18 storeys. Kowloon has a 1Zstoreyed shop known as “the skyscraper”. I am afraid that my responsibility for the vast development which has taken place in the past 30 years has been all too insignificant; but now we have a skyline of sbmething like an average of 30 storeys, with significant buildings going much higher. Connaught Centre was for long the focus because of its Sstorey height and its significant circular windows, but it is now dwarfed by I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Building. Kowloon too has changed beyond recognition. I arrived at a newly-completed runway in the sea, but there was no terminal and we were processed through what were soon to become warehouses, since demolished. I was driven along a main thoroughfare with two storeyed houses in gardens to have tea with some friends in the newest block of flats in the district, at the junction of Prince Edward and Waterloo Roads, which was three storeys high. Now the whole area is 17-storey flats, and the only reason that it is not higher is that proximity to the airport prevents it. The New Territories were winding tracks through paddy fields and little brick kilns, where friends went camping and hunted wild boar. Today, it is a multiplicity of satellite towns, the latest of them very well planned and pleasant to live in. Most of these have populations of about half a million, and are fully provided with community facilities to a very high standard. The large island of Lantao is the only place where something of the character that I knew and loved 30 years ago remains. THE YEAR 1997
So where is this transition going to lead? The largest factor influencing this is the *This paper was originally presented at the UIA International Symposium on Asian Cities and Architecture in Transition, Beijing, China, 27-30 November 1989.
11
12
Kit Haffner
return of the territory to Chinese control in 1997, now less than eight years off. This is causing Hong Kong to have very considerable problems. Any political change is disturbing and confusing, whether it is planned for or happens by political coup. At least if it is planned for, the trauma will be less; and this is what the Anglo-Chinese Joint Declaration and the preparation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law attempted and still will attempt to do. The “one country-two systems” approach was meant to assure the people of Hong Kong of the stability of their existing system for 50 years from 1997, by which time it was confidently asserted that the standard of living and economic systems on the two sides of the present border would certainly be the same, so that the need for any division would cease. I think that at this point I had better express a few things about my personal background. I am an Englishman, despite my German surname (which I inherited from my paternal grandfather), but my maternal grandfather was a Lancashire coal miner from late childhood, an admirer and follower of early socialists like Kier Hardy, and he was a Labour Party agent and sometimes stood for election in hopeless marginal constituencies. My mother inherited a great deal of his beliefs, and I was brought up to believe in the value of socialism, at least at certain stages in a country’s industrial development. I have only once voted in Britain before I came to Hong Kong, and I happily voted socialist. Whilst Hong Kong may have changed my thought pattern, it has not changed the respect that I have for those who believe that all men should have an equitable opportunity to make a contribution to the good of society and that their contribution should be equitably recognised. In my own case, I believe that my contribution to Hong Kong’s people has been expressed in architectural terms. I suppose that I have never really expressed myself in political terms. I have explained this to show that what I am about to say is not the result of antagonism to any regime, but simply a wish to speak relevantly about Hong Kong as a place of transition.
PLANS FOR HONG KONG’S FUTURE
Several booklets exist on Metroplan about urban renewal, and about the Port and Airport Strategy. The Metroplan booklet tells of various methods by which comprehensive planning for the Territory of Hong Kong is envisaged. One of these tools is called the Land Development Corporation (LDC), and I will just speak briefly of its role. It is a wholly-owned Government Corporation, which thus has a duty to be self-supporting economically and is charged with the task of identifying run-down urban areas, compensating those who live there to obtain vacant possession, and redeveloping such areas to modern standards. Previous occupants will have the right to move back into the area at advantageous terms. The only advantage that the LDC will have over private developers will be the right to compulsory purchase, so that large developments are not held up by stubborn occupants seeking excessive compensation. Over the next few years, we shall see some of the worst of our older areas redeveloped by this body. It is about the second booklet that I wish to speak a little more fully. The idea is that Hong Kong’s airport, one of the busiest in the World, is hopelessly locked in by hills and the impracticality of more or longer runways. At the same time, the container port at Kwai Chung, again one of the largest in the World, is equally hemmed in preventing expansion beyond what is currently envisaged. To solve both of these problems, a massive and imaginative scheme is necessary. This has been produced by effectively moving the centre of gravity of the whole urban complex westwards towards the relatively undeveloped island of Lantao.
Fig. I. Hong
Kong’s strategy for port and airport
development.
N
South
14
Kit Haffier
The scheme envisages extensive privatisation of normally public things like airports, highways and bridges to assist in financing. Such privatisation has been very successful in the cross harbour tunnels of Hong Kong, and even in partial privatisation through corporations owned by the Government such as in the Mass Transit System and the section of the Kowloon Canton Railway within the Territory. Such privatisation enables funds to be raised on a commercial basis with proper collateral in terms of the facilities being provided by themselves. The reported reaction of the Government of China to this scheme, as we have it in Hong Kong newspapers, is negative. The objections are apparently twofold. The first I would have thought was minor, and it concerns the military headquarters. This is now located on the north shore of Hong Kong Island with a small dock and a rather odd looking office building that is cantilevered out of a central core. The objection is that the plan envisages this being moved to an island in the harbour which will be linked by bridge into Kowloon. This has been referred to disparagingly as an “outlying island” as if it were too remote to be of use as a military headquarters, but of course this is not true: the island is very near to the shores of Kowloon and will become even closer with the proposed reclamation; it is nearer to Kowloon with over two million people, compared with Victoria with 900,000, and it is linked to a road system with ready access to all the Territory, without the need to go through a congested tunnel system first. The second objection which we have heard of is more serious and practical. It is that Hong Kong will be completing this massive scheme only at the time of handover, and many aspects will go on after 1997. Thus the debts will be at the maximum and the return least certain at the time that China becomes responsible for the Territory. This objection is seen by some of the people of Hong Kong as an admission of lack of faith in Hong Kong’s continuing prosperity. Obviously the plan of extensive privatisation assumes that the debt will be commercially repaid, but even this may be seen as politically undesirable, as perhaps the ownership by large private corporations of things which are usually government owned may be seen as a partial denial of sovereignty; but surely this is not viable, as even the slightest hint of capitalism, which we are assured will continue to exist unabated up till 2047, involves the concept of reduced government sovereignty. The basic difficulty is this. Can one accept a static view of continued prosperity or not? How can a dynamic thing be statically controlled? Certainly within our own industry, the architectural side of construction, a prosperous profession depends upon people having a positive vision of the future; so positive that they are prepared to invest in it, and to invest in the expensive process of building. Architecture, unless it is to be mere maintenance, depends upon a dynamic, growth oriented vision of the future, and surely this is true of all aspects of prosperity. To say that a community is prosperous and must therefore remain unchanged is, with respect to any who may say such a thing, illogical and nonsensical. Buddhism teaches that the only eternal constant is a state of change. The Bible teaches that without vision the people perish. The sages of the ages have seen this, and so should we. If you agree with this view, then we must only look at whether the vision is realistic. With privatisation, this depends directly upon whether investors see the project as profitable. The attitude of the investors will depend upon their perception of the ruling government of Hong Kong in the year 2000 and beyond, when they will begin to see a return on their massive investments. With seven and a half years to go, the present Hong Kong government can only provide the infrastructure for the prosperity which the people of China, expressed through their political system, want for the little peninsula and handful of islands that is Hong Kong.
The Architect in Transitional Hong Kong
15
THE ARCHITECT’S ROLE Into this situation, what is the role of the architect? One of our major problems is seen by asking the question as to whether there will be any architects to have a role to play. I was recently at the annual dinner of the surveying profession in Hong Kong. For the benefit of those who come from countries who have no such profession, I should perhaps explain that surveyors fulfil a number of tasks which are closely tied in with architecture and engineering. These include measuring land and thus drawing maps, acting as agents in the buying and selling of land, measuring the quantities required in order to build buildings, surveys of the structural condition of buildings, arranging for repair and alteration work, and even the design of small new buildings. In the latter capacity they conflict with architects, but generally we happily coexist together. The surveyors of Hong Kong have done a survey of their membership, and the result was announced at the dinner. They discovered that early this year 45% of their members had planned to leave Hong Kong by 1997, generally by obtaining a Canadian passport. After the 4 June incident in Tiananmin Square, the number of those planning to leave had risen to 85%. This is a massive loss of confidence in the future of Hong Kong. This means that of the 1,000 qualified surveyors in Hong Kong now, there will be only 150, in say five years’ time, and I have no reason to believe that the architectural profession is any different from the surveyors. Will there be any architects to have a role to play as this massive loss of manpower comes into effect? I am afraid to say that the answer depends on the perception that the people of Hong Kong have of the benign nature or otherwise of the political system here in Beijing; but we must plan on the assumption that the 85% figure is a temporary reaction, and organise our profession for resilience in the face of change. One of the things which we see as important is that of clearer definition of the roles of the professions involved in the building industry. Thus there are two new Bills - to become Ordinances when and if passed by our Legislative Council which will first of all incorporate our Institute of Architects so that it can be charged with statutory duties, and then the second one will provide for the establishment of a register of architects, and only persons on that register will be able to call themselves “architect”. These laws will be some of the first to be enacted in two languages, despite the problems that this may cause if the versions have slightly differing meanings. Regrettably both the surveyors as a body and some engineers as individuals have raised objections to this, and it seems from these that they see architecture as something which they are equally qualified to practice. One engineer has gone so far as to state to the Legislative Council that, if he cannot say that he is an architect as well, his livelihood is at risk. We have suggested in return that such contentions prove the need for the legislation which we seek! The Institute has incidentally noted with pleasure the creation of a separate body for architects within the Society for China which contains both architects and engineers, and we welcome this as a means towards greater clarity in the public eye of our respective roles. The Hong Kong Institute of Architects would like to offer its congratulations on this event, and to offer our best wishes for future developments. Needless to say, we believe that both professions have a crucial role in the building industry and we hope that the most harmonious relations will be maintained. There is currently a conflict of opinion between those in the Government who approve plans and the private architects over their role as an inspector of the building contractor’s work. I am aware that in China this role is rather minimal, as the system works against one corporation being in a position to control
16
Kit Haffier
another. At the same time, architects in China are anxious that some form of independent quality control should be possible. In Hong Kong the reverse is the position. We have contractual duties defined by agreement with the client to inspect the quality of work being done, and we have rights under the building contract between our client and his contractor to stop work, remove bad work, and so on; and under the Buildings Ordinance we now have similar duties regarding those matters which are controlled by law. The problem is that, because the provisions for control of contractors are poor, the Government wishes to make the designer virtually fully responsible for the quality of work required by law. This will make architects responsible for the work of other people with whom they have no contractual relationship, and we are proposing instead that certain persons in every building contractor’s firm be responsible for their own mistakes and bad work. We have noted the development of a dialogue between the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Society of China about recognition of schools of architecture, and would like to play a larger role in this. Our own concern in Hong Kong is frankly to know what effect 1997 will have upon the right of architects from either side of the present border to work in the other “system”. We are at the same time looking at wider reciprocal recognition within those countries whose schools we currently recognise, and at upward mobility within the profession seen in broader terms of those at technician level moving to professional level qualification. We are also currently very concerned about revision of documentation. We have a new Code of Professional Conduct, with new guidelines on advertising and on shareholders. The standard agreement between client and architect is in an advanced state of revision. We have had some bad experience of commissions resulting from competitions - about which young architects in particular are idealistic - being awarded to other than the winning design. Thus we are drafting competition rules which will be more effective in defining the brief as that of the client and not just that of a jury. We are even trying to revise the standard building contract. This sort of documentation is valuable if an architect is to do his job properly. He should be concerned, not primarily with documentation, but with design and inspection. THE ARCHITECT’S DUTY
The idea, however, is to put legislation and documentation behind us, so that we can get on with the transition of our cities into something more pleasant to live in, and that involves us in doing this not just well, but better. Different people have different ideas about how well we are succeeding in this idealistic task. We had a visit last month by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, renowned for his attacks on modern architecture as having destroyed much of the environmental quality of British towns built up by our forebears over many centuries. He did not comment upon the architecture of Hong Kong, at least not in public, but it seems far removed from the type of environment which he believes should be the work of architects. He is of course the son of a constitutional monarch whose ideas have no legislative meaning, but he carries great personal authority in Britain, and architects are under something of a cloud there. But have they done any worse there than we have in all our countries of UIA Region 4? Our task, in considering the city in a state of transition, is to ensure that we are indeed providing an environment for which future generations will thank us. In Hong Kong it is particularly difficult and at the same time particularly important that such an objective should be met.
The Architect
in Transitional
Hong Kong
17
Post script Two days after my return to Hong Kong, a senior Hong Kong civil servant was reported as saying that the Government of China was in favour of the airport policy expressed in the pamphlet. A day later it was announced that China would be invited to participate financially in the project.
Vol. 15, No. 3, PP. 11-17.1991. Printed in Great Britain.
~AB~~A~~~~~.
The Architect in Transitional Hong Kong* KIT HAFFNER Hong Kong Institute of Architects, Hong Kong
I suppose that the Territory of Hong Kong, consisting of the two closely interrelated cities of Victoria (better known as Hong Kong, confusingly the same as the island on which it stands and the whole territory) and Kowloon and a number of satellite towns in the New Territories, is one of the fastest changing conurbations in the World. Its population is fast approaching six million, making it larger than many countries, yet it lies cm the southern shore of China, and the large population of Hong Kong fades into insignificance in numerical terms even in comparison with some single Provinces of that vast country. THIRTY YEARS AGO
When I arrived in Hong Kong, which was exactly 30 years ago today, the north waterfront of the island consisted of three- and four-storeyed offices and shops built from the mid-Nineteenth Century onwards. There were only two exceptions which were modem concrete structures of about 18 storeys. Kowloon has a 1Zstoreyed shop known as “the skyscraper”. I am afraid that my responsibility for the vast development which has taken place in the past 30 years has been all too insignificant; but now we have a skyline of sbmething like an average of 30 storeys, with significant buildings going much higher. Connaught Centre was for long the focus because of its Sstorey height and its significant circular windows, but it is now dwarfed by I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Building. Kowloon too has changed beyond recognition. I arrived at a newly-completed runway in the sea, but there was no terminal and we were processed through what were soon to become warehouses, since demolished. I was driven along a main thoroughfare with two storeyed houses in gardens to have tea with some friends in the newest block of flats in the district, at the junction of Prince Edward and Waterloo Roads, which was three storeys high. Now the whole area is 17-storey flats, and the only reason that it is not higher is that proximity to the airport prevents it. The New Territories were winding tracks through paddy fields and little brick kilns, where friends went camping and hunted wild boar. Today, it is a multiplicity of satellite towns, the latest of them very well planned and pleasant to live in. Most of these have populations of about half a million, and are fully provided with community facilities to a very high standard. The large island of Lantao is the only place where something of the character that I knew and loved 30 years ago remains. THE YEAR 1997
So where is this transition going to lead? The largest factor influencing this is the *This paper was originally presented at the UIA International Symposium on Asian Cities and Architecture in Transition, Beijing, China, 27-30 November 1989.
11
12
Kit Haffner
return of the territory to Chinese control in 1997, now less than eight years off. This is causing Hong Kong to have very considerable problems. Any political change is disturbing and confusing, whether it is planned for or happens by political coup. At least if it is planned for, the trauma will be less; and this is what the Anglo-Chinese Joint Declaration and the preparation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law attempted and still will attempt to do. The “one country-two systems” approach was meant to assure the people of Hong Kong of the stability of their existing system for 50 years from 1997, by which time it was confidently asserted that the standard of living and economic systems on the two sides of the present border would certainly be the same, so that the need for any division would cease. I think that at this point I had better express a few things about my personal background. I am an Englishman, despite my German surname (which I inherited from my paternal grandfather), but my maternal grandfather was a Lancashire coal miner from late childhood, an admirer and follower of early socialists like Kier Hardy, and he was a Labour Party agent and sometimes stood for election in hopeless marginal constituencies. My mother inherited a great deal of his beliefs, and I was brought up to believe in the value of socialism, at least at certain stages in a country’s industrial development. I have only once voted in Britain before I came to Hong Kong, and I happily voted socialist. Whilst Hong Kong may have changed my thought pattern, it has not changed the respect that I have for those who believe that all men should have an equitable opportunity to make a contribution to the good of society and that their contribution should be equitably recognised. In my own case, I believe that my contribution to Hong Kong’s people has been expressed in architectural terms. I suppose that I have never really expressed myself in political terms. I have explained this to show that what I am about to say is not the result of antagonism to any regime, but simply a wish to speak relevantly about Hong Kong as a place of transition.
PLANS FOR HONG KONG’S FUTURE
Several booklets exist on Metroplan about urban renewal, and about the Port and Airport Strategy. The Metroplan booklet tells of various methods by which comprehensive planning for the Territory of Hong Kong is envisaged. One of these tools is called the Land Development Corporation (LDC), and I will just speak briefly of its role. It is a wholly-owned Government Corporation, which thus has a duty to be self-supporting economically and is charged with the task of identifying run-down urban areas, compensating those who live there to obtain vacant possession, and redeveloping such areas to modern standards. Previous occupants will have the right to move back into the area at advantageous terms. The only advantage that the LDC will have over private developers will be the right to compulsory purchase, so that large developments are not held up by stubborn occupants seeking excessive compensation. Over the next few years, we shall see some of the worst of our older areas redeveloped by this body. It is about the second booklet that I wish to speak a little more fully. The idea is that Hong Kong’s airport, one of the busiest in the World, is hopelessly locked in by hills and the impracticality of more or longer runways. At the same time, the container port at Kwai Chung, again one of the largest in the World, is equally hemmed in preventing expansion beyond what is currently envisaged. To solve both of these problems, a massive and imaginative scheme is necessary. This has been produced by effectively moving the centre of gravity of the whole urban complex westwards towards the relatively undeveloped island of Lantao.
Fig. I. Hong
Kong’s strategy for port and airport
development.
N
South
14
Kit Haffier
The scheme envisages extensive privatisation of normally public things like airports, highways and bridges to assist in financing. Such privatisation has been very successful in the cross harbour tunnels of Hong Kong, and even in partial privatisation through corporations owned by the Government such as in the Mass Transit System and the section of the Kowloon Canton Railway within the Territory. Such privatisation enables funds to be raised on a commercial basis with proper collateral in terms of the facilities being provided by themselves. The reported reaction of the Government of China to this scheme, as we have it in Hong Kong newspapers, is negative. The objections are apparently twofold. The first I would have thought was minor, and it concerns the military headquarters. This is now located on the north shore of Hong Kong Island with a small dock and a rather odd looking office building that is cantilevered out of a central core. The objection is that the plan envisages this being moved to an island in the harbour which will be linked by bridge into Kowloon. This has been referred to disparagingly as an “outlying island” as if it were too remote to be of use as a military headquarters, but of course this is not true: the island is very near to the shores of Kowloon and will become even closer with the proposed reclamation; it is nearer to Kowloon with over two million people, compared with Victoria with 900,000, and it is linked to a road system with ready access to all the Territory, without the need to go through a congested tunnel system first. The second objection which we have heard of is more serious and practical. It is that Hong Kong will be completing this massive scheme only at the time of handover, and many aspects will go on after 1997. Thus the debts will be at the maximum and the return least certain at the time that China becomes responsible for the Territory. This objection is seen by some of the people of Hong Kong as an admission of lack of faith in Hong Kong’s continuing prosperity. Obviously the plan of extensive privatisation assumes that the debt will be commercially repaid, but even this may be seen as politically undesirable, as perhaps the ownership by large private corporations of things which are usually government owned may be seen as a partial denial of sovereignty; but surely this is not viable, as even the slightest hint of capitalism, which we are assured will continue to exist unabated up till 2047, involves the concept of reduced government sovereignty. The basic difficulty is this. Can one accept a static view of continued prosperity or not? How can a dynamic thing be statically controlled? Certainly within our own industry, the architectural side of construction, a prosperous profession depends upon people having a positive vision of the future; so positive that they are prepared to invest in it, and to invest in the expensive process of building. Architecture, unless it is to be mere maintenance, depends upon a dynamic, growth oriented vision of the future, and surely this is true of all aspects of prosperity. To say that a community is prosperous and must therefore remain unchanged is, with respect to any who may say such a thing, illogical and nonsensical. Buddhism teaches that the only eternal constant is a state of change. The Bible teaches that without vision the people perish. The sages of the ages have seen this, and so should we. If you agree with this view, then we must only look at whether the vision is realistic. With privatisation, this depends directly upon whether investors see the project as profitable. The attitude of the investors will depend upon their perception of the ruling government of Hong Kong in the year 2000 and beyond, when they will begin to see a return on their massive investments. With seven and a half years to go, the present Hong Kong government can only provide the infrastructure for the prosperity which the people of China, expressed through their political system, want for the little peninsula and handful of islands that is Hong Kong.
The Architect in Transitional Hong Kong
15
THE ARCHITECT’S ROLE Into this situation, what is the role of the architect? One of our major problems is seen by asking the question as to whether there will be any architects to have a role to play. I was recently at the annual dinner of the surveying profession in Hong Kong. For the benefit of those who come from countries who have no such profession, I should perhaps explain that surveyors fulfil a number of tasks which are closely tied in with architecture and engineering. These include measuring land and thus drawing maps, acting as agents in the buying and selling of land, measuring the quantities required in order to build buildings, surveys of the structural condition of buildings, arranging for repair and alteration work, and even the design of small new buildings. In the latter capacity they conflict with architects, but generally we happily coexist together. The surveyors of Hong Kong have done a survey of their membership, and the result was announced at the dinner. They discovered that early this year 45% of their members had planned to leave Hong Kong by 1997, generally by obtaining a Canadian passport. After the 4 June incident in Tiananmin Square, the number of those planning to leave had risen to 85%. This is a massive loss of confidence in the future of Hong Kong. This means that of the 1,000 qualified surveyors in Hong Kong now, there will be only 150, in say five years’ time, and I have no reason to believe that the architectural profession is any different from the surveyors. Will there be any architects to have a role to play as this massive loss of manpower comes into effect? I am afraid to say that the answer depends on the perception that the people of Hong Kong have of the benign nature or otherwise of the political system here in Beijing; but we must plan on the assumption that the 85% figure is a temporary reaction, and organise our profession for resilience in the face of change. One of the things which we see as important is that of clearer definition of the roles of the professions involved in the building industry. Thus there are two new Bills - to become Ordinances when and if passed by our Legislative Council which will first of all incorporate our Institute of Architects so that it can be charged with statutory duties, and then the second one will provide for the establishment of a register of architects, and only persons on that register will be able to call themselves “architect”. These laws will be some of the first to be enacted in two languages, despite the problems that this may cause if the versions have slightly differing meanings. Regrettably both the surveyors as a body and some engineers as individuals have raised objections to this, and it seems from these that they see architecture as something which they are equally qualified to practice. One engineer has gone so far as to state to the Legislative Council that, if he cannot say that he is an architect as well, his livelihood is at risk. We have suggested in return that such contentions prove the need for the legislation which we seek! The Institute has incidentally noted with pleasure the creation of a separate body for architects within the Society for China which contains both architects and engineers, and we welcome this as a means towards greater clarity in the public eye of our respective roles. The Hong Kong Institute of Architects would like to offer its congratulations on this event, and to offer our best wishes for future developments. Needless to say, we believe that both professions have a crucial role in the building industry and we hope that the most harmonious relations will be maintained. There is currently a conflict of opinion between those in the Government who approve plans and the private architects over their role as an inspector of the building contractor’s work. I am aware that in China this role is rather minimal, as the system works against one corporation being in a position to control
16
Kit Haffier
another. At the same time, architects in China are anxious that some form of independent quality control should be possible. In Hong Kong the reverse is the position. We have contractual duties defined by agreement with the client to inspect the quality of work being done, and we have rights under the building contract between our client and his contractor to stop work, remove bad work, and so on; and under the Buildings Ordinance we now have similar duties regarding those matters which are controlled by law. The problem is that, because the provisions for control of contractors are poor, the Government wishes to make the designer virtually fully responsible for the quality of work required by law. This will make architects responsible for the work of other people with whom they have no contractual relationship, and we are proposing instead that certain persons in every building contractor’s firm be responsible for their own mistakes and bad work. We have noted the development of a dialogue between the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Architectural Society of China about recognition of schools of architecture, and would like to play a larger role in this. Our own concern in Hong Kong is frankly to know what effect 1997 will have upon the right of architects from either side of the present border to work in the other “system”. We are at the same time looking at wider reciprocal recognition within those countries whose schools we currently recognise, and at upward mobility within the profession seen in broader terms of those at technician level moving to professional level qualification. We are also currently very concerned about revision of documentation. We have a new Code of Professional Conduct, with new guidelines on advertising and on shareholders. The standard agreement between client and architect is in an advanced state of revision. We have had some bad experience of commissions resulting from competitions - about which young architects in particular are idealistic - being awarded to other than the winning design. Thus we are drafting competition rules which will be more effective in defining the brief as that of the client and not just that of a jury. We are even trying to revise the standard building contract. This sort of documentation is valuable if an architect is to do his job properly. He should be concerned, not primarily with documentation, but with design and inspection. THE ARCHITECT’S DUTY
The idea, however, is to put legislation and documentation behind us, so that we can get on with the transition of our cities into something more pleasant to live in, and that involves us in doing this not just well, but better. Different people have different ideas about how well we are succeeding in this idealistic task. We had a visit last month by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, renowned for his attacks on modern architecture as having destroyed much of the environmental quality of British towns built up by our forebears over many centuries. He did not comment upon the architecture of Hong Kong, at least not in public, but it seems far removed from the type of environment which he believes should be the work of architects. He is of course the son of a constitutional monarch whose ideas have no legislative meaning, but he carries great personal authority in Britain, and architects are under something of a cloud there. But have they done any worse there than we have in all our countries of UIA Region 4? Our task, in considering the city in a state of transition, is to ensure that we are indeed providing an environment for which future generations will thank us. In Hong Kong it is particularly difficult and at the same time particularly important that such an objective should be met.
The Architect
in Transitional
Hong Kong
17
Post script Two days after my return to Hong Kong, a senior Hong Kong civil servant was reported as saying that the Government of China was in favour of the airport policy expressed in the pamphlet. A day later it was announced that China would be invited to participate financially in the project.