… almost forgot about this post which we wrote earlier in the year.
We visited The former Hollywood Road Police Married Quarters, now renamed PMQ 元創方 in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong earlier this year. The buildings and grounds have been turned into a landmark for the creative industries. It is truly a great place to wander and shop as well as to soak up some local history and creative culture.
The history and preservation efforts of the site are well researched and documented here officially. Much of the writings below have been taken from various Hong Kong government sources.
In 1951, the site started as the Hollywood Road Police Married Quarters — the first dormitory for Chinese rank and file police officers. The site included 140 single rooms and 28 double rooms, with a semi-open design that allowed greater interaction between the residents. The site had been vacant since 2000.
The two buildings have been refurbished and upgraded for new uses. Residential units have been converted into design studios and shops, offices for creative enterprises and lodging for visiting designers. The buildings of PMQ are of modern style, feature a simple and clean appearance with a more utility approach for the design of space and form. This style emerged in the early 1950s when there was a great increase in population, resulting in great demand in buildings which required fast and efficient construction.
In order to cope with this, the design of building aimed at meeting the minimum requirement and standard which resulted in a simple and functional design. Buildings of this style are mainly built of strictly utilitarian reinforced concrete with flat roofs with minimal decoration.
This place turns out to be the childhood homes of both Hong Kong ex-Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and his predecessor Donald Tsang.
When the government was going to auction the land, conservationists launched a campaign, citing social historical values embedded in the buildings and the fact it was once the site of Hong Kong’s first government school offering Western-style education.
Given that nearly HK$600 million of public funds has been spent on its renovation, PMQ is seen as a major test case on how Hong Kong conserves and revitalises historic buildings.
We thought about Common Ground in Seoul (see post here) – which is also a cool place for locals and tourists to socialize and shop. Common Ground is more commercial while PMQ is more artsy – perhaps it can afford to be so as some of the tenants here are sponsored.
PMQ’s mission statement says it wants to nurture the best design entrepreneurs in town, put them on the path to commercial success and make the place a popular destination for tourists and locals in its own right. It wants to be “a place for creative lifestyle experience” and “a stage for creative happenings.”
On the ground and first floors, there are fancy eateries and established designers and retailers like Vivienne Tam and G.O.D. Having known designer names on the premises is vital to the sustainability of the whole project, not just because of the higher rent that they can pay, but also their crowd-pulling power.
We rested our feet with a few drinks at the Tai Lung Fung which adopts a certain vintage Hong Kong eatery aesthetics and design.
The style of Tai Lung Fung, which means grand dragon and phoenix, is before our time and we cannot tell if it is accurate but it looks authentic.
Highly recommended. Their website is here.