"My desk is more like a playroom than a place of work," says Billy Tam Hon-wah, director of Thomas Chow Architects, gesturing towards the Lego models that cover his shelves. Tam is the lead architectural consultant of the revitalisation of the former police married quarters (PMQ) in Central.
"I don't want PMQ to be just a physical space to house a design studio; I want it to become a community. Hundreds of designers working together can do a lot of things."
"There are a lot of interactive spaces. PMQ [management] wants all the studio units to be open and to welcome the public. You can make use of the space just outside the studio - if there is a small class on making leather bags, for example, that can happen outside."
"A basic constraint was the size of the units. They're very small and we can't connect them together. At the same time, we needed a big event space. That's why we have what we call the Cube [which bridges both blocks of the PMQ]. Inside it is an exhibition space and underneath it is a sheltered recreational space.
"I'm working with famous Danish architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen to renovate Island School (artist's impression, pictured top). It's a HK$1 billion project. The school wants to do a whole co-creation process, which means we aren't simply designing the building ourselves. We have to think of a system where we can design it together with the whole school - all the teachers and students. Island School has a strong sense of community, so we are starting off without rooms. Instead, we want space for teaching, which means flexible space, space for communication that makes use of all the greenery around the school."
"School buildings are among the most flexible in Hong Kong. I'm more old-school - I like modernism, like Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. I like to keep it simple, like Tadao Ando - you can make very simple concrete walls that catch the light. In Hong Kong, if you want to do buildings that create this kind of space, schools are the easiest. With residential and commercial buildings, you are limited by regulations and you have to maximise every inch, so you end up with a lot of repeating towers. In a school, you are given a net floor area and you have freedom to configure it how you want."