The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority marks the topping out of the M+ building

The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) is pleased to announce the topping out of the M+ building, a milestone in the development of M+ as a world-class museum and as a major cultural institution of and for Hong Kong. It marks a crucial moment in the countdown to the museum’s planned opening in 2020.
 

Officiating at the ceremony today were Victor Lo, Chairman of the M+ Board; Vincent Lo, Vice Chairman of the M+ Board; Duncan Pescod, Chief Executive Officer of WKCDA; Suhanya Raffel, Executive Director of M+; Jeremy Stowe, Director, Project Control, WKCDA; Wim Walschap, Partner, Herzog & de Meuron; Gavin Erasmus, Director, TFP Farrells; Paul Tsang, Director, Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong; and Thomas Ho, Chief Executive, Gammon Construction Limited.
 

Victor Lo, Chairman of the M+ Board, expressed his gratitude to the entire project team for their concerted effort, mentioning members of the M+ Board and the staff of M+ and WKCDA.  He emphasised the significance of the occasion: ‘Today marks an exciting and long-anticipated step for M+, with the museum building officially topping out and its completion on track. We are closer than ever to delivering a permanent home for M+’s distinguished collections and for a wide range of exhibitions and programmes.’
 

Part of the West Kowloon Cultural District, M+ is a museum for visual culture focusing on twentieth- and twenty-first-century design and architecture, moving image, and visual art from Hong Kong, Asia, and beyond. M+ will be one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world. With a gross floor area of 65,000 square metres, the museum, designed by renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron in partnership with Hong Kong–based TFP Farrells and Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong, will provide an important addition to the cultural landscape of Hong Kong.
 

The building features state-of-the-art spaces, facilities, and functions. Accessible through multiple entry points, the building’s horizontal form contains 17,000 square metres of exhibition space, cinemas, a lecture theatre, a learning centre, a museum shop, performance spaces, cafes, a médiathèque, and a public roof terrace that looks out to Victoria Harbour and the Hong Kong skyline. Soaring up from the horizontal podium is the vertical museum tower, which houses the library, archive, study centre, members’ facilities, museum offices, and restaurants, and features an LED facade for the display of moving image works by artists.
 

‘The topping out of the M+ building is an important step towards the full realisation of West Kowloon, coming right before the opening of the Xiqu Centre early next year,’ said Duncan Pescod, Chief Executive Officer of WKCDA. ‘We are extremely pleased to see Herzog & de Meuron’s design taking shape as a landmark along the harbourfront, set against the backdrop of skyscrapers. We look forward to the delivery of the museum, for audiences in Hong Kong to enjoy and appreciate.’
 

Suhanya Raffel, Executive Director of M+, placed this milestone in the context of M+’s ongoing work: ‘As we mark this major achievement and move steadily towards the delivery of the museum’s permanent home, we continue our work to ensure the visibility of M+, in Hong Kong and around the world. Over the past few years, we have been working conscientiously to deliver this world-class museum, and plans for the inaugural exhibitions to be held in this building are advancing steadily. This planning is essential to introducing the M+ Collections to the public. We very much look forward to moving into M+’s new home, and to opening the doors of the museum in 2020.’
 

Remarks
 

About M+
M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, we are building one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. Our aim is to create a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.
 

About the West Kowloon Cultural District
Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, the West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, as well as provide twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.