When the project was first announced by the Hong Kong government in 2003, it was conceived primarily as a tourist attraction, with exclusive development rights given to one of Hong Kong’s largest property conglomerates. Such scepticism could be forgiven, considering the district’s history. “Hong Kong doesn’t do public space very well.” “I think it will be very difficult,” says John Batten, an art and architecture critic who has followed West Kowloon’s development. But spiralling costs and delays have taken their toll on the project’s reputation, with one local newspaper decrying it as “one of the ugliest breeds of white elephant.” Delays on an adjacent train terminus mean that construction on most of the project won’t be finished until the late 2020s. Built on a piece of land reclaimed from the sea in the early 1990s, it could set a new model for development in Hong Kong, where profits usually trump good architecture and planning.
More than just a cultural district, West Kowloon is an ambitious experiment in architecture and urban planning. Over the next few years, the festival’s waterfront site will be transformed into the West Kowloon Cultural District, a £1.8bn, 40 hectare collection of museums, theatres, shops, flats and public spaces. In a city where public parks are governed by many onerous restrictions – no dog-walking, frisbee-throwing or music-playing allowed – the festival was conceived as a way to see what would happen if Hongkongers used a park as they liked. At one point, a group of people dressed in giant seagull costumes wandered through the crowd, papier-mâché beaks pecking at the ground.įreespace’s focus is revealed in its name. Young people sold handicrafts and second-hand clothes along a seafront promenade, while families picnicked on the grass and food vendors made brisk business hawking pizza and beer. Last November, thousands of people thronged the Hong Kong waterfront for a festival with an unusual name: Freespace.
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