A single architectural image unlocks the story of a local modernist who built civic space for the people not for power
One Drawing, One City, One Story That Needed to Be Told
Among the nineteen images published by ArchDaily in its landmark February 2026 feature on Hong Kong architect Tao Ho, one stands out with particular force. It is an axonometric drawing of the Bayview Residence in Hong Kong, a measured, precise, hand-drafted document that captures a building designed with intelligence and care for its site, its climate, and its occupants. It is also a document that speaks to something larger: the existence of a local Hong Kong modernism, developed by Hong Kong architects for Hong Kong conditions, that has been systematically overlooked in the dominant narratives of the city’s built environment.
The Axonometric as a Political Document
An axonometric drawing shows a building from above and to the side, revealing its three-dimensional logic in a single composed image. In Tao Ho’s drawing of the Bayview Residence, you can read the relationship between spaces, the logic of circulation, the response to the sloped Hong Kong terrain that makes building in this city both a challenge and an art. What the drawing represents is not just architectural skill, though the skill is evident. It represents a philosophy: that buildings should be conceived in relation to the people who will use them and the environment that surrounds them, rather than as abstract sculptural objects dropped from international practices into a neutral site. This is what distinguished Ho’s work from the celebrated imports, the I.M. Pei towers, the Norman Foster monuments, the Zaha Hadid statements, that tend to dominate every account of Hong Kong’s architectural identity. Hong Kong architecture has a local tradition as rich as any imported one, and Ho’s drawings are its evidence.
The Brutalism Hong Kong Research Group
The ArchDaily essay by Jonathan Yeung draws extensively on the work of the Brutalism Hong Kong Research Group, which has documented the concrete institutional buildings of the postwar decades that represent Hong Kong’s most distinctive contribution to the international modernist movement. These buildings, heavy with exposed concrete, carved with deep overhangs that respond to the subtropical sun, and designed with a seriousness of civic purpose that commercial architecture rarely achieves, are under threat. Some have been demolished. Others are at risk. The Research Group’s documentation effort is itself a political act in a city where the authorities have shown little consistent interest in preserving the built heritage that reflects Hong Kong’s distinct cultural and civic identity.
Tao Ho: The Architect the History Books Missed
Tao Ho was born in Shanghai and trained in the United States before settling in Hong Kong, where he built a career that spanned architecture, design, and public advocacy. His most celebrated building, the Hong Kong Arts Centre in Wan Chai, opened in 1977 and provided the city with a home for visual arts, theatre, film, and community programming at a time when such a commitment required genuine advocacy to fund and build. The Arts Centre was not a gift from a colonial government or a trophy for a developer. It was a civic project built for the community, designed to serve the widest possible public, and executed with the kind of architectural seriousness that treats culture as a necessity rather than a luxury.
Responding to Place: Climate, Density, and Community
What made Ho’s work specifically Hongkonger was its responsiveness to the conditions of the city. The subtropical climate demands shade, ventilation, and a considered relationship between interior and exterior. The extreme density demands buildings that give back to the public realm rather than simply consuming it. The social character of Hong Kong, a city of immigrants and refugees and workers building lives in extraordinarily compressed circumstances, demands architecture that speaks of community rather than exclusion. Ho’s buildings met those demands. The Bayview Residence axonometric shows a building that thinks carefully about how its geometry responds to slope and view, how its sections create habitable spaces rather than simply maximising floor area, and how its structure expresses an honest relationship between material and form.
Why Recovering This Legacy Matters Now
The ArchDaily essay arrives at a moment of acute urgency for Hong Kong’s cultural identity. Since the imposition of the National Security Law in 2020, Beijing has systematically reshaped the territory’s institutions, replacing independent governance with direct political control. Museums have had their exhibitions reviewed. Universities have seen their academic freedom curtailed. Libraries have removed books deemed politically sensitive. In this context, the recovery of a figure like Tao Ho, an architect who built for the community and whose work embodies values of civic service and democratic public space, is not merely an exercise in architectural history. It is a statement about what Hong Kong was, what it can be again, and what cannot be erased as long as the buildings still stand. Amnesty International UK has consistently documented the assault on Hong Kong’s cultural institutions as part of the broader crackdown on the city’s civic life.
Buildings as Memory, Architecture as Resistance
There is a concept in urban studies of buildings as memory devices: structures that carry the values and intentions of the people who built them across generations, available to anyone who inhabits or encounters them. Tao Ho’s Hong Kong Arts Centre carries the memory of a civic ambition, a belief that culture belongs to everyone and that architecture can serve democracy. That memory is available to every Hongkonger who walks through its doors today, regardless of what the political authorities say about the city’s past or future. The Hong Kong Arts Centre remains active, programming exhibitions and performances that continue the civic mission Ho embedded in its walls. The building endures. The tradition it embodies endures with it.
A Legacy for the Diaspora and for the City
For Hongkongers now living in exile or diaspora, figures like Tao Ho provide essential grounding. They are evidence that Hong Kong produced its own intellectual and creative tradition, that the city was never simply a passive recipient of imported culture and imported governance, but an active, inventive, self-determining community. That tradition of civic self-determination is precisely what the pro-democracy movement of 2019 was defending. The axonometric drawing of the Bayview Residence is, in its quiet and precise way, a document of that tradition.
Pui Yi Cheung
Economy & Labor Journalist, Apple Daily UK
Contact: puiyi.cheung@appledaily.uk
Pui Yi Cheung is an economy and labor journalist with expertise in employment trends, small business dynamics, and workers’ rights. Educated at a respected UK journalism school, she received formal training in economic reporting, data literacy, and investigative techniques, equipping her to cover complex financial topics accurately.
She has contributed to Apple Daily and other liberal Chinese newspapers, reporting on wage policy, employment conditions, labor organizing, and the economic challenges facing diaspora communities. Her work emphasizes firsthand interviews and careful examination of official statistics and regulatory documents.
Pui Yi brings real newsroom experience in translating economic data into accessible reporting without sacrificing accuracy. She is known for methodical fact-checking and for consulting independent experts when covering technical subjects.
Her authority is reinforced by consistent editorial oversight and adherence to transparency standards, including clear sourcing and prompt corrections when required.
At Apple Daily UK, Pui Yi Cheung produces trustworthy economic journalism grounded in evidence, professional experience, and public-interest reporting.
