Hong Kong
Editor's guides
Curated by Seven Places
Culture
Asia Society Hong Kong Center
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's 2012 conversion of a 19th-century British explosives depot into a serene cultural campus, linked by an elevated walkway that picks its way through woodland above protected fruit-bat habitat. Quiet, careful architecture amid the density.
Bank of China Tower
I.M. Pei's 1990 tower of stacked triangular prisms, sheathed in glass and crossed by structural diagonals that let it shrug off typhoons with minimal steel. Its sharp angles famously stirred feng shui controversy among neighbours.
Hong Kong City Hall
A 1962 modernist civic complex by Ron Phillips and Alan Fitch, with a low concert-hall block, a tower and a memorial garden in clean Bauhaus-influenced lines. A protected landmark of post-war public architecture on the Central waterfront.
HSBC Building
Norman Foster's 1985 headquarters, briefly the world's most expensive building. Its structure hangs from external masts so the ground floor is left open as public plaza, with a mirrored 'sunscoop' bouncing daylight down through the atrium. High-tech architecture at full conviction.
International Commerce Centre (ICC)
At 484m, Hong Kong's tallest building (2010) by Kohn Pedersen Fox, anchoring West Kowloon. Its tapering, gently fluted form culminates in the world's highest hotel and a light show projected across the harbour.
Jockey Club Innovation Tower
Zaha Hadid's only Hong Kong building (2014), a fluid 15-storey design school where floors and columns seem to melt and flow. A burst of parametric curves on a tight campus corner.
Lippo Centre Tower 2
Paul Rudolph's twin towers (1988) in Admiralty, their faceted glass volumes stepping outward like koalas hugging a tree — earning the nickname. A late, sculptural work from the American architect, rare in Asia.
M+ Museum
Herzog & de Meuron's vast visual-culture museum (2021) in West Kowloon, an inverted-T of green ceramic tile whose harbour-facing facade doubles as a giant LED screen. One of Asia's most ambitious museum buildings.
Tai Kwun
A colonial police and prison compound reborn as an arts centre in 2018. Herzog & de Meuron threaded two new aluminium-clad blocks between the heritage buildings — a much-praised lesson in adaptive reuse on a dense urban site.
Two ifc
César Pelli's 412m obelisk (2003) on the Central waterfront, its tapered shaft topped by a curved 'crown'. The defining silhouette of the Hong Kong Island skyline and a star of the harbour panorama.