Christopher DeWolf

3 days ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

In 1991, after months of arduous negotiations, political wrangling and secret meetings, British prime minister John Major and Chinese leader Deng Xiaopeng signed a formal agreement to build a new airport in Hong Kong. Normally, new airports wouldn’t require such high-level diplomatic manoeuvres. But this was no ordinary airport. It was a vote of confidence in the future of Hong Kong, whose time as a British colony would come to an end in 1997. And it wasn’t just an airport.

1 week ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

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.

1 week ago | scmp.com | Christopher DeWolf

Many years ago, artist Adrian Wong Ho-yin was astonished to discover a lazy trick used by many Hong Kong contractors. He was walking down an alley in Tsim Sha Tsui, not far from Chungking Mansions, when he noticed a wall clad in mosaic tiles bulging from water damage. He looked more closely and realised that there were at least six or seven types of tiles layered atop each other. “It felt like I was standing in the present and looking through a wormhole into the past,” he says.

2 weeks ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

Eric Schuldenfrei pushes a button and sends plumes of white smoke through a floor of public housing. It rushes through corridors, spilling into bedrooms and living rooms before spilling out windows into the warm spring air. This is not a real housing estate, of course – it’s a scale model depicting a cutaway view of a floor in a Y-shaped tower.

1 month ago | scmp.com | Christopher DeWolf

It has been at least three years since Norman Foster was last in Hong Kong. “I’m overdue for a visit,” says the renowned British architect, who turns 90 next Sunday. The Pritzker Prize laureate has a long history with the city. In the mid-1980s, his design for the HSBC headquarters in Central propelled him to international fame, thanks to its innovative modular construction, inside-out structure and early focus on environmental sustainability.