The project is an ex-Municipal Council project. The New Wing together with the existing Ko Shan Theatre promotes and preserves cultural heritage of Cantonese Opera and beneficial to Hong Kong in taking the lead role in the development of this traditional art form in the Greater Pearl River Delta area.

The project aims to create additional public facilities within an existing public park with minimum impact on its environment, while enhancing the theatre’s identity as Hong Kong’s hub for Cantonese opera. The project consists of a 600-seat auditorium, exhibition hall, rehearsal rooms, resource centre, restaurant and other ancillary facilities.

A-Theatre-Inside-A-Park
Ko Shan Theatre New Wing negotiates harmoniously with the park’s existing topography, preserving the mature precious trees. External timber-outlook sun-shading fins, metaphorically representing the existing tree-scape, dematerialize the building massing and blend subtly into the surrounding nature’s scale, textures and colours. A “Green Trail” extends vertically the at-grade park with the lavishly-landscaped terraces, a Tea-House, an Exhibition Gallery, a Cantonese-Opera Information Centre and a roof garden - “Moon Lawn”; injecting a fresh cultural and leisure experience to the community.

A-Park-Inside-A-Theatre
Taking advantage of external landscape – a traditional Chinese architectural technique offering spatial/ visual/ symbolic richness into a small and introverted space, is adopted in the design of the public realm. The foyer, curvilinear in plan-shape, continually unveils its spatial quality as one walks along, similar to the strolling experience in a Chinese landscape garden. “Red-timber-screen”, “white-petal-ceiling”, and “black-stone-woven-wall” offer Chinese symbolic meanings of “well-being”, “elegance” and “stability” respectively.

The project successfully revitalizes the park’s role as a major public amenity facility by transforming the formerly four-tennis-court site into a public park plus theatre for the enjoyment of more people. It also adds on more green elements to the park like a green trail, green terraces, a sizable green roof garden and achieves a 32% green-roof-coverage.

Environmental impacts are minimized via green building strategies, e.g. high-performance building envelope (Overall-Thermal-Transfer-Value = 17.17W/sq.m.), rain-water-recycling, renewable-energy installation and dimmable LED-lighting. Natural daylight, sound, breeze and scenery are brought into the interior via the high-performance glazed building enclosure which has electrically-operated windows to be opened under favorable weather conditions to assist the foyer operating in free-cooling-ventilation mode to minimize energy consumption. The project achieves Gold-grade of HK-BEAM New Buildings Certification.

Floor Area: 10,538sq.m.
Site Area: 4,000sq.m.

Awards:
2015 Chivas 18 Architecture Awards (Public / Community Architect of the Year)
2015 Cityscape Awards for Emerging Markets (Built Projects - Community, Culture & Tourism Project Award)
2015 Cityscape Awards for Emerging Markets (Built Projects - Sustainability Award)
2015 Hong Kong Art & Design Festival - Outstanding Greater China Design Awards(Spatial Design)
2014 ArchSD Award
2014 HKIA Award (Community Building)

Leisure and Cultural Services Department, HKSARG

Ronald Lu & Partners
Glenn Lau, Peter Yam, Vincent Kwan, Philip Chan, Andy Lee, Becky Wan, Janet Lo

Contractor: Gammon Construction Limited
Project Manager: Architectural Services Department, HKSARG
M&E Consultant: Electrical and Mechanical Services Trading Fund, HKSARG
Quantity Surveyor: Rider Levett Bucknall Ltd.
Structural Engineer: Mott MacDonald Hong Kong Ltd.
Landscape Architect: ACLA Limited
Town Planner: PlanArch Consultants Ltd.
Environmental/Ecology Consultant: Allied Environmental Consultants Ltd.