Clad with reflective stainless steel panels, the M+ Pavilion cantilevers out towards panoramic views of Hong Kong Island. Photo courtesy of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority
Shiny, shapely, shifty: a new arts pavilion has landed on the shores of Hong Kong?s Victoria Harbour, designed by JET Architecture?s Jeff W. N. Leung, MRAIC and Tynnon Chow, an energetic pair who split their time between projects in China and Canada. They won the commission through an international competition in 2013, in collaboration with local firm VPANG and Lisa Cheung as architects of record.
The M+ Pavilion, which opened last year, sits on newly reclaimed land on the Kowloon peninsula, and enjoys one of the best views of Hong Kong Island. The waterfront-hugging area was master-planned as the West Kowloon Cultural District by Foster + Partners, with other venues including Bing Thom Architects? Xiqu Centre for Chinese opera and Herzog
& de Meuron?s M+ museum for visual culture, under construction next door, for which this pavilion is ostensibly a folly related to a larger complex. As a kind of pop-up attraction, the pavilion, along with a nearby temporary tree nursery park, set the tone for what is to come.
The building?s reflective, mirror-like stainless steel panels, which naturally encourage a selfie state of mind, have come to define the pavilion as ?that mirror building on the peninsula.? Emerging from berms, the cladding was meant to camouflage the building in the landscape, but it...