Hong Kong Reads: Raymond Fung Explores the Untold Stories of Local Architecture

Quick, name a Hong Kong architect. Who comes to mind? Maybe it’s Rocco Yim, who has designed a number of prominent structures including the Central Government Offices and the Hong Kong Palace Museum. Or maybe it’s William Lim, although he is as well known as an artist and art collector as he is an architect. Perhaps it’s Tao Ho, whose avant-garde buildings and focus on sustainability in the 1970s and 80s were well ahead of their time.

But if you couldn’t think of anyone off the top of your head, don’t worry: that’s a common condition. In a city whose instantly recognisable buildings were mostly designed by architects from overseas — think of Norman Foster’s HSBC Building, I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower, Cesar Pelli’s Two IFC or Terry Ferrell’s Peak Tower — local architects often don’t get the credit they deserve, especially when they are working in a city that values cost efficiency above good design. 

Raymond Fung knows this all too well. Since retiring as senior architect of the government’s Architectural Services Department, he has devoted himself to ink painting, but he still has one foot in the architectural world. Hence his 2024 book, Untold Stories: Hong Kong Architecture, which aims to shed light on some of the talented Hong Kong architects that have shaped the city without earning much public recognition for it. 

This appears at first to be a classic coffee table book: the richly illustrated 358 pages of this oversized tome weigh more than two kilograms. But if the label of coffee table book implies a certain triviality — something to distractedly peruse while visiting friends — Untold Stories is actually a meaningful and idiosyncratic contribution to the conversation about Hong Kong’s built environment. 

ArchSD architect Vivian Fung transformed the Hong Kong Museum of Art – Photo courtesy Raymond Fung

Fung has compiled 70 projects from across Hong Kong. From the very beginning, it’s clear that he is drawn not towards the “large-scale buildings and generic shopping malls” he criticises in the book’s preface, but to structures and spaces with a sense of public purpose. “On a Sunday in 2020, I came across a report in Ming Pao on local public architecture, and I was overwhelmed with mixed feelings,” he writes, dismayed at the paucity of good design on one hand, and the gems that have made it through a difficult design environment on the other. Untold Stories is a catalogue of architecture that, at least in Fung’s view, makes Hong Kong a better place. It’s also an irreverent and sometimes intimate encounter with the people responsible for that architecture. There is no portrait photography in this book, which is organised by project, not architect, presumably to keep the focus on architecture rather than personalities – an antidote to the “starchitect” era where celebrity sometimes outweighs design integrity. But each architect’s character still comes through as Fung describes his conversations with them. 

There’s Lam Wai-ming, who offers a meditation on the origins of art. His design for TUVE, a boutique hotel in Tin Hau, eschews the gilded ostentation of typical Hong Kong accommodations for something almost primordial: a moody hotel of dark spaces defined by stone, brick and metal. There’s Ida Sze and Billy Chan — “dressed very simply,” Fung writes, “one in black and the other in white, and both looking as if they had come out of Muji” — who describe how the simple pleasures of everyday life in Switzerland inspired their approach to design. William Lim shares the story of how he almost flunked out of architecture school.

Naturally enough, given his background in the Architectural Services Department, Fung pays particular attention to a number of projects designed by his former colleagues. The ArchSD, as it is often known, is the government’s in-house design department, responsible for everything from sport centres to libraries to public toilets. Fung spent virtually his entire career there, and during his time he became known for particularly accomplished architecture – all the more remarkable given the limited budgets afforded to public projects in Hong Kong. His design for the Sai Kung Waterfront Park is remarkable for its openness and tranquility, with commercial kiosks that frame views of the water, a reflecting pool and artworks including five bells, one for each of Sai Kung’s temples.

Fung didn’t work alone: at the ArchSD, he cultivated a generation of protégés and allies who have continued his tradition of thoughtful design within bureaucratic and budgetary constraints. In the book, we meet M.C. Chung, whose designs for the Wo Hop Shek Crematorium and Pak Shek Kok Promenade in Tai Po “exude the beauty of tranquility,” in Fung’s assessment. We learn how Andrew Nam’s design for the Kwun Tong Promenade was inspired by Millennium Park in Chicago and Cheonggyecheon — the former elevated highway that is now a restored stream and wildly popular park — in Seoul. ArchSD architect Vivian Fung transformed the Hong Kong Museum of Art from a musty, insular-feeling building into one that opens up to its spectacular harbour setting.

Few of these architects receive much credit for their work outside the architectural community. And while Untold Stories probably won’t turn any of them into household names, it’s an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to understand who is making a positive difference in Hong Kong’s urban landscape – and how they’re doing it.

Photo is slider: Kwun Tong promenade designed by Andrew Nam

Untold Stories: Hong Kong Architecture is published by Unicorn.