Hong Kong’s skyscraper church: a look inside one of the world’s most modern and innovative places of worship
- Wesleyan House Methodist International Church is a 22-storey high-rise in Wan Chai, topped with a Sky Chapel that has breathtaking views of the city
- Architect Rocco Yim conceived the structure and wanted it to be ‘enlightening, liberating, and comforting’
Hong Kong architect Rocco Yim had always wanted to design a church. The appeal of a building where moneymaking was not the raison d’être was strong, and Yim’s prayers were answered when his firm, Rocco Design Architects Associates, was assigned the redevelopment of Wesleyan House Methodist Church, in Wan Chai.
Years earlier Yim had designed a chapel attached to a kindergarten in Fanling, in Hong Kong’s New Territories, but this was a full-scale church, serving a regular congregation of 800, with an open-door policy that welcomes all visitors.
It was to have separate venues for worship, weddings, funerals and youth activities; facilities for the church’s outreach services (including a dental clinic); and a residential component for seven clergy and their families. In all, facilities requiring 11,000 square metres (118,400 square feet) of space had to be accommodated on a site with a footprint of only 800 square metres. There was no other solution: the building had to go up.
And so evolved a 22-storey skyscraper church, completed last year, that the architect conceived to be “enlightening, liberating, and comforting” and that would draw in worshippers and passers-by at the busy junction of Queen’s Road East and Kennedy Road – even if just to shelter from the rain or sun.
Key to the welcoming ambience the client had specified is that there is no rigid boundary between the neighbours and the church. “The ground floor is completely open. You don’t feel you have to push a door. It’s very inclusive,” Yim says.