K.P.D.O. Breathes New Life Into Aging Hong Kong Tenement Building

For all its gleaming glass-and-steel cathedrals to modernity, Hong Kong is more defined to its residents by the characterful plethora of aging mid-century tenement buildings that overwhelmingly comprise the city’s urban fabric. However, they are often the first to go in the face of urban renewal and gentrification, replaced by the Hong Kong archetype of marble-clad luxury residential towers, and as such it is all the more surprising to see a project which instead seeks to preserve the defining characteristics of these tenement buildings — the overhanging floors above street level and the angled upper floors. Taking one such building, the Tung Fat Building in the Kennedy Town neighborhood, design firm K.P.D.O. revamped its exterior along simplified Art Deco lines and converted the interior into eight luxury seaview apartments. Inside, original cast terrazzo handrails and moldings were preserved, while the actual apartments were furnished with neutral white walls and textured timber floors, with their floor plans optimized to increase open space. Massive windows offer an uninterrupted view of the entrance to Victoria Harbor for sweeping vistas of the shipping channel from dawn till dusk. Browse the images above and find more projects by K.P.D.O. here.