The world’s largest architecture exhibition opened earlier this month in Venice and with it, Hong Kong’s contribution: an archive of the city’s future heritage.
Located in a villa just outside the 12th century Venetian Arsenal, one of the two main venues of the Biennale of Architecture, the Hong Kong exhibition greets visitors with bamboo scaffolding in the courtyard. Indoors is a treasure trove of scholarly insights and artistic reflections on everything from municipal service buildings to composite buildings to original drawings and blueprints of renowned public housing estates like Choi Hung and Wah Fu.
It’s like a greatest hits album of what makes Hong Kong unique – and as you can tell from the panoply of links in the paragraph above, it aligns neatly with many topics Zolima CityMag has covered over the years. Projecting Future Heritage: A Hong Kong Archive, as the exhibition is titled, is a record of the many architectural and urbanistic elements that define Hong Kong and yet, paradoxically, are either overlooked or at risk of disappearing. Hence the need for an archive.
“It turned out we actually had too much material,” says architect Fai Au, one of the exhibition’s three curators, along with Ying Zhou and Sunnie S.Y. Lau, all of whom teach at the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Architecture. They ended up organising most of the exhibition like an actual archive, with photographs, scale models, architectural plans and other materials stored inside large drawer units.
Bamboo scaffolding under construction at the Hong Kong exhibition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Photo courtesy of the curators
Urban installations
But there are eye-catching installations in the space, too, not the least of which is the bamboo scaffolding. Designed by Beau Architects in collaboration with the Architectural Land Initiative and master scaffolder Choi Wing-kei, it’s a practical structure that provides seating for events in the courtyard. But it’s also a reflection of a quintessential part of the Hong Kong landscape that may soon vanish: the Hong Kong government recently announced a policy of phasing out bamboo scaffolding in favour of steel.
There is plenty of bamboo on display at the Venice Biennale; its sustainability and durability has made it a favourite material for architects around the world. But bamboo scaffolding is a rare sight that has drawn many passersby into the Hong Kong exhibition. When they enter, they encounter something else surprising: a giant metallic egg engraved with floral patterns, like the kind found on the metal accordion shutters that are common outside many old Hong Kong shops.
“Memory Eggency” by SOSArchitecture and Urban Design Studio, a large metallic egg in which visitors can step to hear the sounds of Hong Kong. Photo courtesy of the curators
This is “Memory Eggency — The Sonic Life of Urban Memory,” an installation by Sunnie Lau’s firm SOSArchitecture and Urban Design Studio. Visitors can step inside the egg, where they will hear recordings of Hong Kong’s urban soundscape, including the sounds of Cha Kwo Ling Village, a squatter village in East Kowloon that will soon be redeveloped. There are recordings of ritual village celebrations like those held for Tin Hau’s birthday, but also everyday sounds like conversation inside a local cha chaan teng, the clatter of mahjong tiles and birdsong competing with the rhythmic roar of pile driving as new construction reshapes the village. Another installation in the Hong Kong exhibition, “On Hing Travel Agency: Fictional Archive of Disappearing Hong Kong” by Ina Wu, also includes typical Hong Kong sounds, like the distinctive tick-tick sound made by MTR station escalators and the constant audio chime of pedestrian crossing signals.
“Listening to these without a visual outlook, you really feel the nervousness and fast pace of Hong Kong – the constant construction and redevelopment,” says Lau. They are sonic artefacts of a city that is constantly changing.
Another installation, “Foraged: Archiving Material Time” focuses on a different kind of artefact. Over the past several years, architect, researcher and writer Natasza Minasiewicz has collected a variety of objects that she has found near her home on Lamma Island. She now has at least 50 objects in her garden, plus bits of mosaic tile, terrazzo and other material that has washed up on the island’s beaches. For the biennale, she has used some of those materials to create a deceptively simple pair of objects: an armchair and a lamp.
Objects found on Lamma Island and transformed into furniture that reflects different aspects of Hong Kong’s built environment. Photo by Natasza Minasiewicz
There’s more to them than meets the eye. “They’re assembled in a way that references other urban and architectural elements in Hong Kong,” says Minasiewicz. She found the chair next to a rubbish bin; it has a frame made of bent metal tubes and was upholstered in a tatty fabric. Minasiewicz stripped the upholstery and installed a marble seat as a reference to the inlaid stone that was a common feature of furniture during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). “I found that material in a cha chaan teng on Lamma that was changing tabletops,” she says. Beyond the historical reference, she chose stone “because it’s cooling, which makes the seat more comfortable in a hot climate like Hong Kong,” she notes. She screwed metal spheres into the seat back as a nod to the ubiquity of this shape around Hong Kong. “They punctuate public spaces, but they also serve a feng shui purpose, because the sphere symbolises unity and wholeness.”
The chair is accompanied by a lamp whose spherical top looks like the 1970s-era lampposts still commonly found in many parks. It sits atop a scavenged bit of plastic piping labelled “Caution Street Lighting” in English and Chinese. It normally contains underground fibre optic cables; along with the written warning, its use is indicated by its colour, purple, as underground utilities are colour-coded to make things easier for contractors who need to dig open the street. The lamp is supported by a chunk of granite that Minasiewicz found in the rubble of an old Hakka house that had been demolished; historically, many Hakka people in Hong Kong worked as quarriers or stonemasons.
Bamboo scaffolding designed by Beau Architects, the Architectural Land Initiative and sifu Wing Kee. Photo courtesy of the curators
More from the Venice Biennale
“Foraged” is one of 33 projects presented in the Hong Kong exhibition. Just like the city that inspired it, there’s a lot to discover in a small space. “Hong Kong has many facets to explore, but they’re often taken for granted,” says Lau. “It takes time to understand the uniqueness.”
And that’s exactly what we’re planning to do. Over the next few months, we’ll be using Hong Kong’s exhibition at the biennale as a launchpad to explore the nuances of the city’s urban landscape. Stay posted.
The Venice Biennale of Architecture runs until 23 November 2025. The Hong Kong exhibition is located in Campo della Tana, Castello 2126 and can be accessed free of charge during the biennale opening hours.
Editor’s note: This article was amended from its original version to include more detail about the audio installations.