Introduction
This article seeks to understand the legacies of a particular Western real-estate development and architectural practice in Hong Kong between the two World Wars: the Crédit Foncier d'Extrême-Orient (hereafter CFEO). It also answers three main questions: first, how did residential development and architectural design combine forces and blend the best of both worlds in one practice in Hong Kong? Second, what kinds of residences were targeted at the middle classes (both Western and Chinese) during the 1920s and 1930s in Hong Kong? And third, how have relationships between architectural design, the property development industry, architects and architectural practices evolved in Hong Kong? These questions build on studies on architectural adaptation, colonial Hong Kong housingFootnote 1 and the rise of the middle classes in Hong Kong.Footnote 2
In the beginning of the twentieth century, architectural firms in China collaborated with construction industries and real estate developers and, in some cases, even combined the best of three worlds. Streamlining of work in this way meant that the company could construct a building with higher efficiency and less expense, thereby fulfilling the demand for housing by the rapidly increasing middle-class population. One company that combined architectural design and construction was the Fuller Construction Company of the Orient, an American company based in Manchuria (in Dalian and Changchun). It rationalised its operations by creating in-house departments of bricklaying, carpentry and painting, rather than following the standard American practice of hiring subcontractors from other companies after securing a bid.Footnote 3
Academics have discussed the issue of adaptation of Western architects when working in Chinese contexts in the twentieth century. Some have argued that while the noted American architect Henry Murphy (1877–1954) did not play a role in the debates about ‘regionalism’, ‘localisation’ or ‘globalisation’, he was in fact a “forgotten critical regionalist, and unknown globalizer and an architect who associated Chinese traditions with U.S. architectural technologies that his work helped diffuse in East Asia”.Footnote 4 Murphy's legacy extends beyond laying the groundwork for modern Chinese urban planning, particularly having wrestled with the concept of what he termed “adaptability” and striking a balance “between up-to-date architectural technology and Chinese building traditions” in the spread of new materials and methods for building types.Footnote 5 His “adaptive architectural Renaissance” had sought meaning beyond mere appearance.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese cities were indeed experiencing processes of change in urban, societal and political scenes.Footnote 6 From the recently discovered nationalism at the founding of republican government in 1911 to the new political and literary movements in the 1920s, China was undergoing the rejection and reinterpretation of tradition towards new creative, literary and artistic productions. These movements have been well documented and researched, with literature and discourse critiquing the flowering of ‘new’ and ‘modern’ cultures, particularly in cities like Shanghai. In these critiques, the main focus was on print culture, cinema and the literary scene, ignoring spatial and architectural discussions.
In comparison, the British colony of Hong Kong was often deemed as the lesser ‘other’ of Shanghai, and the “island [of Hong Kong] did not go through architectural transformation in the 1930s as Shanghai did”.Footnote 7 Exactly a decade and a half has passed since Lee's comment in 1999, and renewed research and discoveries in academic circles, including this research, intend to provide a new dimension and perspective on the previously underrated and neglected architectural and urban history of Hong Kong.
Although a substantial body of research on residential development in Hong Kong exists, it often only focuses on the period after the Second World War. These studies examine land policies, housing management, redevelopment, new towns, administration and finance of public housing, and particularly place an emphasis on government-led public housing after the 1953 Shek Kip Mei fire that devastated an entire squatter settlement in Kowloon.Footnote 8 Past research has generally highlighted government interventions on post-war urban planning and positioned the housing programmes in Hong Kong as being controlled via a top-down approach.Footnote 9 This article intends to reposition the role of early twentieth-century property development and architectural design industries prior to the reconstruction era, and to better understand how these industries had ushered in, at the time, a new era of residential types and a new group of middle classes in Hong Kong.
The article is structured as follows: the next section will set the stage and identify the actors, the CFEO being one of them, who played the major roles of undertaking residential development in China and Hong Kong in the decades just before the Second World War, and the projects that they carried out as non-government-led urban planning and development. Then, the third and fourth sections will examine the residential typologies and building strategies devised by the CFEO to cater to both the Western and Chinese middle classes in Hong Kong of the 1920s–1930s. The concluding section will argue that it was due to the unique collaboration of architectural design, real estate and land speculation in one company that allowed architects to experiment with residential typologies uniquely adapted to the locality in colonial Hong Kong.
Building Modern Neighbourhoods in Hong Kong and Chinese Treaty Ports: Origins of the CFEO
Two decades after Hong Kong was established as a British colony in 1842, Kowloon Peninsula, just north of the main island, was also ceded to the United Kingdom in 1860 under the Convention of Peking. A boundary line, today known as Boundary Street, is historically significant for demarcating the northern part (Chinese Kowloon, later New Kowloon since 1898) from the southern part of (British) Kowloon. The northern part of Kowloon remained part of China until it was leased as part of the New Territories to the United Kingdom in 1898 for 99 years under the “Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory”. In 1903, the colonial government started to sell crown land by auction in Kowloon Tong, situated in the heart of the Kowloon Peninsula. Infrastructures such as electricity and transportation were blooming in Kowloon at the turn of the century. China Light & Power had built its first-generation electricity plants at the intersection of Ho Man Tin and Chatham Road in 1901, although the site was later reclaimed to make way for the construction of the Kowloon–Canton Railway. In 1922, a Town Planning Scheme was established by the colonial government as a first major attempt to apply town planning principles to the whole of urban Hong Kong, aiming to develop Kowloon Peninsula as a medium-sized industrial and commercial location. These urban programmes and constructions indicate the commitment of the colonial government and the keen competition among land and housing developers in the Kowloon Peninsula.
In the 1920s the government filled out the Kowloon Tong reservoir and relocated a cemetery with plans to develop Kowloon Tong as a garden city. In 1922, a group of businessmen founded the Kowloon Tong and New Territories Development Co. Ltd. with plans to establish an ambitious garden city of 250 detached and semi-detached residences of two floors in Kowloon on an area over 80 hectares, following the model established by Ebenezer Howard.Footnote 10 Areas abutting the Boundary Line to the south were developed by CFEO immediately afterwards Perhaps they had started acquiring real estate properties primarily to receive a stable income through rent collection prior to investing in. The land along Prince Edward Road was among the major developments by the CFEO at this time. Prince Edward Road, newly laid out in the early 1920s, was a road that became a crucial connection between the eastern and western parts of Kowloon Peninsula, and joining with Boundary Street at the far eastern end (strategically joining the bustling Mongkok district with Kowloon City). Originally called Yi Wah Avenue, the name was changed in 1924 in order to commemorate Prince Edward's visit to the colony. Prince Edward Road grew to become a major thoroughfare that connected the neighbouring Kowloon districts of Sham Shui Po, Tai Kok Tsui, Mong Kok and Kowloon City.
In China CFEO was known as Yi-pin Dichan Gongsi 義品地產公司 (translated as Yi-pin Real Estate Company), and in Hong Kong as Yin wei-li 尹威力. Their construction operations ranged from the production of building materials, investment in real-estate properties and the design and construction of modern architecture projects. The foundation of CFEO originated from the 1906 controversy between the church and state in France when church properties were confiscated by the French government as a result of the anticlerical legislation in 1901–1904 whereby the French government expelled many religious orders and seized their real estate properties. Avoiding the confiscation of their properties in the French concession of Tianjin (of which 10 hectares included several hundreds of Chinese houses), the Lazaristes decided to sell them. Five Frenchmen, including two architects named Henry Charrey and Marcel Conversy, gathered the necessary capital to buy these properties. Unable to obtain the help of French financial groups in the development of these buildings, they finally secured the support of a Belgian company, the Compagnie Internationale d'Orient, a subsidiary of the Banque d'Outremer. This resulted in the establishment on 3 August 1907 of the Société Franco-Belge de Tientsin as a limited Belgian company,Footnote 11 with the Belgian Banque d'Outremer responsible for its management. The headquarters of the Société Franco-Belge de Tientsin was established in Brussels and an office opened in Paris. Shortly after, the Société created a department of mortgage loans in 1908 and, in 1909, a ceramic factory or brickyard intended for the constructions in Tianjin. In 1909, the company acquired 5 hectares of land in the French concession of Shanghai, on which 26 European villas were built. The managers of the company thereafter decided to open a branch office to continue developing mortgage operations in the city.
After investing in Shanghai, the Société Franco-Belge de Tientsin changed its name to Crédit Foncier d'Extrême-Orient in 1910. The company promptly expanded by establishing architectural offices in other treaty ports and cities of China, respectively in Hankou and Hong Kong in 1911, in Beijing in 1915 and Ji-nan in 1918. In 1928, an office also opened in Singapore where the company flourished until the 1950s. CFEO also established a brick and tile factory in Shanghai in 1919 and a brickyard in Hong Kong in 1931, accelerating the company's fluidity in the construction process. An advertisement for the brick and tile factory in Shanghai provides the following description: “This factory, erected in 1919 on ultra modern lines, is equipped with perfected [sic] plans and kilns. It is in a position to provide architects and contractors with any kind of earthen ware in any size and pattern, as bricks, hollow tiles, roofing tiles, flue [sic] and drain piping, wall and floor tiles, sanitary, apparatus, etc”.Footnote 12
CFEO, with architectural offices in all branch offices, was also involved in mortgage loans and other operations for generating profit from real estate investments. The branch offices reported to the headquarters in Brussels and, ultimately, collaborated with each other in China. The directors of CFEO looked for young architects who were experienced in design, drawing and control of building works, and “flexible enough to adapt to the Chinese building methods”.Footnote 13 Belgian architect Gabriel Van Wylick (1897–1964) can be highlighted due to his significant and long career, established first in Hankou and then in Hong Kong as chief architect from 1919 to 1946. In fact, his contribution in Hong Kong was so important that the CFEO architectural office was named after him in the colony, appearing in local journals and advertisements as Yin Wei-li 尹威力, which is a transliteration of ‘Van Wylick’.Footnote 14 The English translation of 威(wei) and 力(li) mean ‘might’ and ‘power’, suggesting, perhaps, Van Wylick's determination to make a name for himself and CFEO in Hong Kong that we shall see in the analysis of his works in the following. Regarding the client pool, CFEO, with its Catholic beginnings, often received commissions from French bodies or Catholic missionary groups, but in fact residential projects would make the company and Van Wylick's reputation in Hankou and Hong Kong. In Tianjin, CFEO, under the guidance of the aforementioned Henry Charrey and Marcel Conversy, mainly received commissions within the French concession. Their collaborative firm, Charrey & Conversy, was often involved in bank building designs, while other CFEO architects such as Gustave Volckaert (1888–1978) received many commissions in the residential sector in Hong Kong after Van Wylick's departure in 1946.Footnote 15 Unfortunately CFEO could not handle the political and economic changes at the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and liquidated a decade later in 1959.
Decision-making in CFEO's architectural offices was centred on the relationship between the company's directors (with the mindset of a developer) and the respective chief architect of the branch office in the city. In the case of Van Wylick in Hong Kong (where he was head of the office from 1927 to 1946), he appeared to have the autonomy of choosing which designs to implement in the city. As this article will go on to demonstrate, the architectural typologies may have been decided by the company's directors and due to speculative activity, but Van Wylick's memoranda with CFEO's directors reveal that his Hong Kong team retained the decision and freedom to implement certain adaptive architectural designs produced earlier in his career. In 1928, Van Wylick had designed a three-storey apartment house for himself in Brussels (Figure 1). The design was to a certain extent what he realised for himself in Brussels but was not able achieve for his Chinese clients in Hankou. Having written an article in a Belgian architectural journal a year earlier, indicating that he had “[. . .] often tried, when [he] had to build residences for the rich Chinese, to make them accept projects which, while offering the comfort of the West, would have been able to become allied with the character of the country; rarely was [he] able to convince them”.Footnote 16 Detailed drawings and an interview with his son Edouard reveal Van Wylick's preference for a Chinese emphasis on the façade of the building, featuring an elaborate Chinese roof structure at the central bay window and abstract ledges or brackets for the support.Footnote 17 In fact, the typology of Van Wylick's house is derived from early twentieth- century Belgian residences of the day. According to several clippings from the Belgian magazine Pourqoui Pas in Van Wylick's photo album, these residences were referred to as “modern bourgeoisie houses”. Although now no longer a property of the Van Wylick family, the residence still stands today, unique in its appearance in the heart of Brussels along Avenue Antoine Depage near the Free University of Brussels.
Fig. 1. The residence designed by Gabriel Van Wylick in 1928. Photograph taken in 2011, Brussels (photograph by author)
Housing the European Middle class: Experimenting with Art Deco architecture in Hong Kong
The following year, in 1929, Van Wylick produced a set of architectural drawings for CFEO developments in Kowloon, Hong Kong. The elevation drawings of a particular type of residence bear a striking similarity with his own house in Brussels, with a traditional Chinese roof element also prominent on the first floor (Figure 2). It cannot be ascertained as to which were the first works of CFEO in the British Colony following their establishment there in 1911. However, shortly after Van Wylick became the head of the architectural office in 1927, the earliest surviving architectural drawings signed by him in January 1929 are detailed maps, elevation and plan drawings of the residences along Prince Edward Road. A map of the area drawn in April 1929 shows the lots purchased and developed by CFEO along Prince Edward Road (Figure 3). The shaded areas indicate the lots that CFEO had developed.
Fig. 2. Elevation drawing of the 1929 residences on Prince Edward Road; note Chinese detail on first floor bay window (Archive file 394, CFEO, Brussels).
Fig. 3. Map showing development lots in shaded ink (Lots A–E), indicating CFEO development, 1929 (Archive file 394, C.F.E.O., Brussels).
Referring to this map, these residences are located at the eastern first corner of the intersection between Prince Edward Road and Waterloo Road (Lot D/ Type D residences), and were commissioned by the Roman Catholic Foreign Missions of Paris. A close inspection and comparison shows that these residences incorporated the design of Van Wylick's Belgian residence, duplicating the architectural arrangement horizontally and thereby allowing two separate tenants of residency. In summary, the houses were of a semi-detached nature that separates into a dual-tenancy interior layout, as reflected in the plan drawings (Figure 4). Not only does this imply that Van Wylick transported the architectural style of his Brussels residence to Hong Kong, it is also suggests that he held a high degree of autonomy in the design execution of the Hong Kong branch office. Moreover, the residences in Hong Kong display decorative bracket sets on the first floor that are abstract and arguably Art Deco in design. A horizontal feature composed of green glazed ceramic tiles also forms a decorative element running along the balustrade of the second floor.
Fig. 4. Plan drawings of Type D residences on Prince Edward Road, designed 1929 (Archive file 394, CFEO, Brussels).
It is also worth noting that newspapers of the day described the residences as “an entirely new style” of architecture in the British colony,Footnote 18 but CFEO had in fact adapted from Belgian townhouses while incorporating local decorative elements and climatic considerations. By incorporating dog kennels and accommodation for amahs or helpers in the house, the residences evidently intended to serve a middle- to upper-class target clientele in Hong Kong. The first part of the newspaper article, entitled “Kowloon Development: Dwellings of Unusual Type Being Built along Prince Edward Road”, is as follows:
Following the course of the progress that is going on in Kowloon Tong, especially along the length of Prince Edward Road, it is remarkable what a large number of handsome structures are being erected for private residences – semi-detached houses and flats.
Among the many outstanding ones are here illustrated, chosen because they represent an entirely new style in architecture in the Colony, and because they have rapidly become popular among those who are seeking comfortable dwellings at reasonable prices [. . .]Footnote 19
West of the intersection between Prince Edward Road and Waterloo Road is the shaded lot ‘E’ on the 1929 map. A road cutting through the lot, labeled “private road” at the time, was eventually renamed Belfran Road, indicating the development by the Belgian-French company (Belgique-Francais in French) CFEO. Apart from an overview map of the site, today no architectural drawings have been found for this lot. However, according to old photographs of Van Wylick, certain modernist residences can be identified here, including a Catholic church.Footnote 20 In designing the residences on Lot E (Figure 5), CFEO placed wide, open balconies and terraces on each floor. External decoration is particularly emphasised in the modernist linear grooves and stepped relief enhancing the central tier, characteristic Art Deco features. These modernist residences provide symmetrical and harmonious arrangements, with the floors flanking either side of the central staircase.
Fig. 5. Image of residence on Lot E/ KIL 2959, located at the most-westerly corner of the junction and facing Prince Edward Road. Estimated completion around 1935–1937. (Courtesy of Edouard Van Wylick)
Comparing east and west at the intersection of Waterloo Road and Prince Edward Road, two distinct architectural typologies appear. Those to the east evoke the typical twentieth-century Belgian town house with pitched roofs, while those to the west are clearly going through an exploration in modernist forms of flat roofs, linear planes and Art Deco façade decorations. As reflected in the only image of the now demolished building, this last building at the corner site of Lot E stands out particularly with its protruding balconies and cantilevered roofs that suggest horizontality, while its central core and façade wall enhanced by vertical stepped motifs and reliefs. Van Wylick and the CFEO were definitely making a bold statement via their experimentation with new urban forms and typologies in this district. This residence strongly displays a synthesis of modern materials, the preferences of the rising middle class in the 1920s and 1930s, and adaptation from local residential types, marking an important period in local residential industry that is omitted from the urban history of Hong Kong. It also appears to fit with Gwendolyn Wright's expression of the Art Deco movement that she defines as “an effort to synthesize local forms with modern materials and consumer preferences”.Footnote 21
Planning for a Middle-Class Chinese Neighbourhood: Adapting from Local Typologies
In the 1920s and 1930s, a majority of the local Chinese population of Hong Kong resided in tenement houses or tong-lau 唐樓 (literally ‘Chinese house’) structures. At the time of the First World War, Hong Kong had a population of 500,000. When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in 1941, the population had reached 1,639,337. Census figures for the population were 625,166 in 1921 and 840,473 in 1931.Footnote 22 The 1920s and 1930s was also a time when Hong Kong was going through profound social changes.Footnote 23 A large number of immigrants were flooding into Hong Kong due to political and social unrest on the mainland, specifically due to the Warlord Era from 1916 to 1928. It was increasingly difficult for the government to accommodate this great influx of Chinese population, who mostly resided in tenement houses despite overcrowded conditions.Footnote 24
There was therefore a high demand for residential buildings, reflected in the numerous new projects and roads laid out in Kowloon at the time. When Prince Edward Road was newly laid out, land sales were conducted by the colonial government, and companies such as CFEO purchased them accordingly. CFEO, we may be reminded, functioned not only as an architectural design office but also as a property and land developer. There were often negotiations among the company's managers about which particular parcels of land to purchase and whether or not they would render high profit to the company. In the booming economic situation of Hong Kong in the 1930s, CFEO therefore grasped every possible opportunity to take advantage of the high demand for residential projects, particularly in the Kowloon district. Besides constructing residences for middle-class Europeans as above, they also noticed a demand for a Chinese neighbourhood. The company therefore adopted a strategy to design that they termed “Chinese constructions”, which resembled the form of local tenement houses, near the residences mentioned above. The proposition of purchase, written by E. Molines (director of the Southern Department), describes the positive response of the company as follows:
I am persuaded that the purchase of the lot (Kowloon Lot O- Plan D- 6) is a good operation, the development of these terrains in Chinese constructions will certainly contribute very much to the development of the European centre that we have created on the neighbouring lot. There are no existing shops in the neighbourhood, and it is probable that those we contribute will be very rapidly rented out.Footnote 25
These above mentioned “Chinese constructions”, later to be termed by the company as “semi-European”, were built around 1930, and are still standing along Nos 190–220 Prince Edward Road West today (located at the furthermost western corner on the development map). The terrain forms a rectangle at the east corner, and the constructions consist of a group of 16 apartment buildings of four floors. The site is a greatly accessible location, resting immediately adjacent to the former Kowloon–Canton railway station (today Mong Kok East station) that links the entire Kowloon Peninsula to Guangzhou. Each apartment building contains four apartment units per floor, where the first (and ground) floor has a covered pavement or walkway instead of a verandah or balcony. In total there are 64 units served by eight main staircases and eight adjoining backstairs at every two buildings. Gabriel Van Wylick remarked that these residences are “marvelously suitable for the modern European and Chinese middle class”.Footnote 26 He made no efforts to hide his pride in the success and popularity of this building via his efforts for CFEO, describing that by 1940 this “semi-European” apartment house construction was serving a permanent clientele with great rentability:
The development of Building No. 8 (Lot O/ K.I.L. 2372) was our first operation in Hong Kong of the semi-European type. . . . The experience provided us the reason to adopt this genre of construction and this type of small apartments, which addresses a permanent clientele. . . . In view of the popularity therefore of this building at the moment, and its good ‘rentability’, we do not wish to sell for under $400.000.Footnote 27
The architectural drawings of this block of improvised Chinese tenement houses by CFEO indicate that the constructions consist of a row of flats, each of which is comprised of a front living block and rear servants’ quarters. The living block consists of an entrance hall, a dining room, an internal bedroom and a bathroom; while the servants’ quarters house a servants’ room, a kitchen and toilets on the ground floor. Every two blocks would share one common staircase at the front and one independent servants’ staircase at the rear. There is a well in the open yard adjacent to the servants’ quarters of each block. The main entrance door is located at the landing of the staircase on each floor including the ground floor. This ground floor space, reflecting the original intention of CFEO mentioned above, fortunately remain today as shops. The interior of the building is composed of timber floors in the living block and timber treads for the front staircase. The staircase lobby and the bathroom of the living block are finished with terrazzo, while the servants’ quarters are finished with cement floors and the roof with Canton tiles. A fireplace is also provided in all living rooms.
This type of housing typology is derived from the Chinese tong-lau structures, and is a “hybrid house form that emerged out of Chinese building tradition and colonial building policies”.Footnote 28 In the 1880s, the Taipingshan District (located to the west of the Central District on Hong Kong Island) was dotted with hundreds of rows of tong-lau that served as principal homes for many Chinese labourers who resided in these tenement houses, concentrated in this bustling centre of domestic trade. These “Chinese houses”, as indicated in Osbert Chadwick's (1844–1913) colonial report in 1882, differ from the two-storey townhouses in South China in that they were built back-to-back, often higher than three-floors and were densely inhabited.Footnote 29
The façade of the row of apartment houses on Lot O is decorated with Art Deco motifs, geometric patterns and a stepped gable, enhancing the overall emphasis in verticality and linear accentuation. It is thus interesting to note that, unlike the usual classical decorations in tong-lau houses around Hong Kong, these houses blend Art Deco motifs with Chinese decorations such as green tiles and balusters glazed in green and made to resemble bamboo shoots. The exterior is finished with Shanghai plaster, another key indication and connection with tenement houses in East and South-East Asia (Figure 6). In British Malaya during the 1930s, there was a similar building boom where a new generation of architects was “breaking away from Classical and Raj styles of the pre-war era to the new, clean-lined Art Deco style in building for the increasingly prosperous families and firms”.Footnote 30 Despite the fact that Art Deco in Asia was a European derivation, academics argue that there was a China connection in a way: while in Europe and America the monumentality of Art Deco required construction or cladding in stone, in South-East Asia and China this material was regarded as inaccessible and expensive. A substitute was found in Shanghai plaster, which was a low-cost external surfacing material that could easily be applied by skilled craftsmen and worked into decorative detail and, moreover, looked like stone.
Fig. 6. The “Chinese houses”, later on termed “semi-European” apartment houses by CFEO, constructed c.1930. Recent view of the building, taken in 2013. (Photograph by author)
In Hong Kong, CFEO, under the directorship of Van Wylick, developed on a major scale with projects ranging from European villas to “Chinese houses” or later on “semi-European” apartment building constructions for the Chinese middle class, all within the district along Prince Edward Road on the Kowloon peninsula. It is uncertain why there was a gap from 1911 to 1927 and CFEO had no activities during that time in Hong Kong. Perhaps they had started acquiring real estate properties primarily to receive a stable income through rent collection prior to investing in land development and architectural design activities. It is noteworthy that Van Wylick had almost immediately started these construction activities upon his arrival in Hong Kong. With a number of other apartment house designs in the neighbourhood embodying similar modernist typologies in the late 1930s, this suggests that CFEO had perhaps created a style that influenced the appearance of certain Chinese and Western middle-class neighbourhoods in Hong Kong. This also indicates that there was a great demand for of these building typologies in the society, an analysis supported by an inspection report of the Hong Kong office by Henri Bourboulon (CFEO director in 1933) that revealed the success and impact of the Van Wylick's works in Hong Kong:
It was necessary . . . to attract the first tenants by offering to them something other than ordinary houses that are well kept and comfortable. So, our architect [Van Wylick] is entitled to our congratulations and I am far being the only one to say it. His houses are admired by everybody in Hong Kong, so much so that they are imitated and even copied by a good number of architects, even English and Chinese architects.Footnote 31
Conclusion
The Crédit Foncier d'Extrême-Orient, as a company with the mindset of a developer, allowed their in-house architects a large degree of freedom and autonomy. Currently in Hong Kong, most property developers also accommodate in-house architects but often with the role of an Authorized Person as a statutory agent on building control rather than producing architectural design. Most residential projects of current property developers, however, are outsourced to private practice architects locally or abroad. A recent well-known example is the Opus Hong Kong luxurious residences on the Peak, designed by Canadian star architect Frank Gehry and developed by Swire Properties in 2012. Reflecting upon the current situation of residential development in Hong Kong, contemporary architects have lamented about the unsuccessful merge between public and private interests in large residential projects.Footnote 32 Property developers, in light of the huge demand for housing and the small amount of suitable land for building, have been the major players in the modern Hong Kong residential landscape. The efficiency the developers are trying to achieve and the profits they are expecting so lucrative that the resulting architecture designs often ignore the basic requirements of living – specifically environmental considerations that have been sacrificed in order to maximise construction on limited available land.
This article therefore highlighted the different strategies that CFEO, a Western property developer in Hong Kong and China's treaty ports, had adopted in altering the urban landscape in Hong Kong and propelling modern residential development in the city during the early decades of the twentieth century. Among their main strategies was the introduction of modernist exteriors characterised by Art Deco forms and experimenting with new architectural typologies adapted from the Chinese locality. Through a close analysis of historic photos, maps and architectural drawings, the residential typologies of CFEO in Hong Kong can be seen as having evolved from the Belgian typologies back in the architect Van Wylick's home country. Architecturally speaking, their latter experimentation with the southern Chinese vernacular housing typology was arguably for commercial and strategic reasons, to attract not only Western but also Chinese clients in an area that was initially reserved for European residents due to the Kowloon reservation ordinance in 1902.Footnote 33
This article offers an historical approach to a largely successful example of residential development in the early decades of the twentieth century in Hong Kong. CFEO particularly stands out for its aggressive yet opportunistic approach to planning new neighbourhoods and providing housing for both the Western and Chinese middle classes of the time, and creating a residential typology in the early 1930s derived from the southern Chinese apartment house but adapting it to serve middle-class Chinese clientele. This autonomy and collaboration between the in-house architects and the development company that allowed for such originality, creativity and satisfaction in housing development in colonial Hong Kong is unfortunately no longer evident in the city today.
