Foster + Partners has been selected for the design of the 40-hectare masterplan for West Kowloon Cultural District. City Park will be a major cultural centre for music, performing and visual arts, incorporating public spaces and spaces for Chinese culture, living, working, galleries and studios on a dramatic harbour-front site in the heart of Hong Kong. The announcement was made today by Henry Tang, Hong Kongs chief secretary and chairman of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, following the results of the international competition including a year-long public consultation. The project is considered to be the largest cultural initiative in the world today.
The proposal sets the cultural buildings as the jewels in a new urban quarter alongside a magnificent 23-hectare public park. Foster + Partners brings its understanding of urban design and knowledge of Hong Kong to a carbon neutral masterplan that captures the unique character that makes it such a great city.
The city has great significance for our practice, as well as personal significance in 1979, I moved to Hong Kong with my wife, setting up our office to work on the Hongkong Bank. We are greatly looking forward to fulfilling Hong Kongs ambitions to be one of the great cultural cities in the world.
