South of PMQ is a neighborhood that has almost disappeared. A little more than 15 years ago the cluster of Post -war apartments Along the streets of Staunton, the streets of the Wing Lee and the Shing Wong from Urban Renewal Authority (Ura) were planned for renovation. Neighborhood activists had fought for the project for years, but how often did it seem to give little hope that this historic corner from Shung wan would be saved.
Then Echos of the rainbow was released. The 2010 film with Sandra Ng Kwan-Yue and Simon Yam Tat-Wahoffered a nostalgic representation of life in the Wing Lee Street in the 1960s. It was a cash hit and his success had a flaw glass over the ambitions of the Ura. Under the assembled public pressure, the agency decided to stop the renovation and instead repair its real estate in the Wing Lee Street, a quiet, car -free series of walk -in buildings that are known as Tong Lau.
The owners of the nearby real estate tried to renovate similar efforts to renovate their vintage building, including the owner of the 19 Shing Wong Street, whose stylishly restored buildings are now housing a café. The fate of the remaining Uraic real estate in the region-one collection of nine buildings between 1948 and 1958 as well as seven free plots of land in the air.
No longer. Today, after years of empty sitting, the nine buildings, which are known together as H19 Staunton Street/Shing Wong Street project, were restored in community, commercial and residential use. And the efforts were welcomed: Last year the project was recognized with a special award for the legacy and adaptive reuse by the Hong Kong Institute of ArchitectsTogether with a revitalization team of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and a Grand Award of the Quality Building Award.
“It is not really a nature conservation project-is more of a project to reintroduce communities,” says architect Jo Lo Lo Ting-Chuen, whose studio archipia was the leading architectural consultant of the Ura on H19. “There is a very strong neighborhood here and many people were very concerned about this project.”