DESCRIPTION

I remember walking the City during a visit in 1989, watching the city come to life at all hours of the day and night.

The architectural choices we made spoke to Ruskin's Lamp of Beauty--form crafted with care, not just utility. The way marble and metal met, the attention to scale and detail, the interplay between restraint and richness--all pointed to an effort to uplift, not just serve. Light and materiality was important to the design.

These photos are taken almost 30 years after the completion of construction. As retail designs tend to have a shelf life of no more than 15 years, this is an enduring feat of perseverance and longevity. Additionally, surviving the cultural and political shifts during those those decades, this building becomes a stable anchor of memory - of what we know and love of Hong Kong, but yet open to future transformation.

In 2024, I returned to the Landmark not with a drawing set, but with my two daughters, on their very first trip to Hong Kong. Walking through those same City with them was surreal. They see the space through completely fresh eyes, unburdened by memory, yet somehow still connected to it. To me, it's living proof that good architecture--thoughtful, contextual, human--endures beyond drawings and deadlines. What we build becomes part of a city's memory. And when we revisit it with the people we love, it becomes part of ours, too.

 

This is the only design project that Dan has had the opportunity to work on in Hong Kong. It was a real privilege for him to work on  a project in Hong Kong - the place that Dan was born. And to see it decades later with his own children was truly a profound gift.

 

Photo credits: Dan Chong