WKCDA Extends Public Consultation Period

The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA), with the support of Rocco Design Architects Limited, the Hong Kong Palace Museum’s design consultant, will present the architects’ proposed internal layout and spatial design concepts of the museum at the exhibition at City Gallery starting from 15 February. The WKCDA also announces that the public consultation will be extended for two weeks to 8 March to allow more time for the general public and the stakeholders to offer their views on the project.
 

Launched on 11 January, the public consultation exercise aims to collect public views on the Hong Kong Palace Museum project and in particular its design, programming, learning and interpretation opportunities. Up to now, the exhibition has received nearly 15,000 visitors and its online version has registered over 14,000 pageviews. The WKCDA welcomes comments on the project which can be submitted by filling in a questionnaire available at the exhibition.
 

Apart from the exhibition, the WKCDA has also organised a series of consultation sessions with relevant stakeholders.  More consultation sessions will be arranged in the coming weeks, including the second sessions for the WKCDA’s Consultation Panel, the architecture and related professions and the arts and culture sector as well as meeting other stakeholder groups to gather their views.  Consultation session details are available at the WKCDA website (http://www.westkowloon.hk/en/whats-on/current-forthcoming/hong-kong-palace-museum-public-consultation-and-exhibition/chapter/consultation-activities ) and parties interested in joining the session for the arts and culture sector are welcome to register online. Upon completion of the public consultation exercise, all the views collected through this exercise will be consolidated and considered comprehensively and the outcome will be reported to the WKCDA Board.
 

“The WKCDA is keen to solicit and listen to the views and comments from stakeholders. These will help the Board decide how to take forward this landmark project, which would allow the exquisite collection of the Palace Museum, one of world’s greatest collections of art and antiquities, to be displayed in a permanent home in Hong Kong. I urge people to visit the exhibition or view the museum design online and share their views,” said Mr Duncan Pescod, CEO of WKCDA.
 

“Our design concept is founded on the understanding of traditional Chinese visual culture characteristics and takes inspiration from the spatial progression in traditional public buildings. The proposed internal layout of the museum’s building is a reflection of the resulting spatial configuration.” said Mr Rocco Yim of the design consultant of the Hong Kong Palace Museum project.
 

“The creation of the Hong Kong Palace Museum is an exciting challenge and an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an architect. Though our team has faced a very tight schedule, we have been listening to voices of all parties regarding this project. We hope the expanded contents of the exhibition will help facilitate the public consultation process and inspire stakeholders and the public to share further comments with us and make this museum a place that the people of Hong Kong can take pride in,” added Mr Rocco Yim.
 

The Hong Kong Palace Museum Project Exhibition

Date     :            From Now to 8 March 2017

Time     :            10:00 to 18:00

                           (Closed on Tuesdays (except Public Holidays))

Address:            3/F, City Gallery, 3 Edinburgh Place, Central, Hong Kong (Near City Hall Lower Block)

Notes

About 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 M+, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, as well as provide 23 hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.

About The Palace Museum

Situated in the very heart of Beijing, the Palace Museum is a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its vast holding of over 1.8 million artefacts including paintings, ceramics, calligraphy, and antiquities belonging to the imperial collections. The Palace Museum houses many nationally protected valuable cultural objects, but due to its huge scale only a small fraction (0.6%) of this extraordinary collection is able to be displayed to the public at any given time.

The collection includes over 367,000 ceramics, over 180,000 textile pieces, 53,000 paintings, 75,000 calligraphy, 19,000 lacquer items and over 23,000 jade objects. In 2016 the Palace Museum attracted a record of 16 million visitors.

Hong Kong’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department has presented a number of exhibitions which display the rich diversity of the Palace Museum’s collection. The four thematic exhibitions held since 2012 have been extremely popular attracting over a total of some 430,000 visitors.