Tai Kwun Opens in Hong Kong’s Former Central Police Station

Tai Kwun, the centre for heritage and arts created in Hong Kong’s former Central Police Station compound, opened to the public on 29 May 2018. The site, on Hollywood Road in Central, brings together three declared monuments: the Central Police Station, the Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison. Its name, which means big station, is the one local people long used for the police headquarters.

The compound was built in stages between 1841 and 1925 and was for more than a century the centre of law and order in the city, where people could be arrested, tried and imprisoned within one walled block. The prison closed in 2006. Two years later the government and The Hong Kong Jockey Club agreed to conserve the site, and work began in 2011. The project took about eight years and cost HK$3.8 billion, which makes it the largest heritage conservation project carried out in Hong Kong.

Sixteen historic buildings were restored, with the conservation architects Purcell leading the heritage work and Rocco Design Architects acting as executive architect. The masterplan and the two new buildings are by Herzog & de Meuron. JC Contemporary, an art gallery, and JC Cube, an auditorium, stand at the prison end of the site and are wrapped in a screen of cast aluminium blocks whose proportions echo the granite of the old walls. Between them, a covered outdoor stair doubles as seating for performances and film screenings.

The rest of the compound is organised around two open spaces, the Parade Ground and the Prison Yard. Visitors can walk through restored cells in the prison halls, the magistracy’s courtroom and the barrack block, where exhibitions tell the history of the site. The opening programme began with 100 Faces of Tai Kwun, an exhibition built on the memories of people who lived and worked around the station. Restaurants, bars and shops occupy several of the former offices and quarters.

Tai Kwun opened in phases, but its effect was immediate. In a city that has demolished much of its colonial-era architecture, it preserved a whole block at the top of the Mid-Levels escalator, a few minutes’ walk from the galleries of Hollywood Road, and it has become one of the first stops on a cultural visit to Hong Kong.