A lost paradise : the disappearing urban heritage of Kai Yuen Street, Hong Kong

Abstract

Looking around the old districts of famous cities from all over the world, most of the urban area can maintain over one hundred years or over hundreds of years in their primeval architectural style. Even if it is a new building, its style and appearance, including building height and material and so forth will be required to follow the rules to be in harmony with the surrounding fabric. The shops on these streets may be mainly self-employed, having a long history of retail in the nearby communities. In Hong Kong, almost all of its urban areas have been developed and redeveloped many times after WWII, and because of this, very few contiguous urban neighbourhood sites have buildings that are consistent in age and architectural style. The buildings in this area appear to be of a quality that can qualify as architectural heritage, and therefore forming a contiguous heritage cluster and a heritage neighbourhood area. However, this has never been investigated. In addition, the area is under high threat, as there is a developer’s plan to demolish all the buildings and redevelop the entire area. There is urgency to study and document this site before it is completely gone. Under this circumstance, the intact sites with characteristics that are consistent in age and architectural style need to be thoroughly studied and protected accordingly. By chance, Kai Yuen Street site may have such characteristics. From my preliminary findings, I discovered that the site is highly under threat from on-going and future development. Given this awareness, I realize that there is urgency to study and document the site before it is completely gone. Through documentation of selected 19 buildings at Kai Yuen Street, this dissertation intends to document the condition of the existing group of buildings dating from 1950s to 1960s and also the neighborhood relationship at Kai Yuen Street. This will be the original record of this area and will be my original finding of my dissertation.