Preserving what's left of Hong Kong's lost architecture

The tragedy of Hong Kong's "lost" architecture is that so many old buildings were demolished before anyone thought to save them. In a curious stroke of good fortune, one of the few remaining examples of classic pre-war architecture, in one of the city's most expensive locations, survived because it was occupied by some of society's most disadvantaged people.

The 10 turn-of-the-20th-century Chinese shophouses in Wan Chai escaped redevelopment because, for many years, the cluster was a shelter for the homeless.

When the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) acquired the back-to-back Mallory Street/Burrows Street properties, a public consultation began that ensured their preservation as a community arts hub.

Known collectively as the Green House (although it's been returned to its original white) the name is a nod to the Grade 2 heritage listing, meaning it is under a preservation umbrella, like the Blue House on Stone Nullah Lane.

Hong Kong-based global architecture firm Aedas was tasked with revitalising the buildings and the project, completed in July last year , is earning high praise. Last month it won Medal of the Year Hong Kong - the highest honour - at the Hong Kong Institute of Architects annual awards, as well as a Special Architectural Award for heritage and adaptive re-use.

Project design director Edward Leung Yee-wah considers it remarkable how intact the original building was. "Prominent features - such as the iron balconies, tiled pitched roof, timber French doors and internal timber staircase - were retained, and were able to be preserved."

This was also one of the first examples of the integration of colonial construction into Chinese dwellings - as authenticated when paint, plaster and concrete were stripped away to reveal bricks and ironwork bearing the stamps of the British factories that had made them.