October 8th, 2010
The 18 steps (十八梯) in Chongqing form a wonderfully atmospheric alleyway. It’s one of many older streets sunk down amongst the thrusting skyscrapers of this rapidly growing city which feel saturated with history, in contrast to the modern development all around.
Clambering up the steps, I feel like I’ve found the traditional China I’ve been searching for. Old grey bricked buildings dating back to the Ming dynasty tumble crookedly down the hill on each side, their open doorways offering glimpses of interiors cluttered with objects worthy of a museum. A few trees spread out branches into the streets, their roots crawling around the brick walls of these buildings.
I pass an old man sitting on a shady step with a cup of tea by his side and a newspaper spread out. Further on, a lady squats in that typical Chinese way and hacks with a cleaver at dark red meat laid on a board on the steps. Climbing higher, there’s a small massage place that has men sat outside with their bare torsos covered in wooden cups.
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August 15th, 2010
This is a feature story that was originally published in the July 2010 edition of Muse magazine. The photos accompanying this article were taken around the Graham Street Market in Central.
Standing in the soggy heat of a late spring afternoon, Katty Law reflected on the irony that it took a movie a mere two months to do what she has been fighting to achieve for two years. “We’ve been talking about Wing Lee Street for so long,” she said, looking up at a rusted balcony on this sleepy street in Sheung Wan. “But we couldn’t convince the government to save the whole street.”
That was before the makers of Echoes of the Rainbow picked the street — with its single row of tong laus built just before and after World War II — as the perfect backdrop for their weepy drama about a shoemaker’s family in 1960s Hong Kong. After the movie won a prize at the Berlin Film Festival, dozens of photographers, schoolchildren and sightseers started visiting the narrow street, recording the details of an urban scene that has become nearly extinct in Hong Kong. As the crowd of pilgrims grew, heritage advocates raised their voices and a group of architects, engineers and urban planners joined in, urging the URA to preserve all of the buildings on Wing Lee Street.
Government officials were listening. In a surprise announcement, the Secretary for Development, Carrie Lam, announced that Wing Lee Street would be withdrawn from the urban renewal site. For Law, co-founder of the Central and Western District Concern Group, the announcement was only a temporary respite from the overall battle to persuade the government to rethink its entire approach to urban design. Her aim is to get the government to encourage development that is sensitive to the environment, that enhances the city’s streetlife and sense of community and that respects Hong Kong’s history and heritage. “Right now, developers can do whatever they want, and they’re facilitated by the government. We need planning controls,” she said.
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July 21st, 2010
When Cynthia Lee Hong-yee found out that her family planned to sell her grandfather’s private garden to developers, she returned from the United States to take photos of the lush greenery and eclectic Western-influenced Chinese architecture.
“I was capturing some of the details and I realized I just couldn’t capture Dragon Garden’s greatness,” she said. “It has to be experienced.”
She realized the garden needed to be saved — and it was up to her to do it. After a contentious battle with the relatives who owned the garden, Lee managed to persuade her uncle, Lee Shiu, to save it from redevelopment by purchasing it from his brothers and nephews for HK$100 million. The plan, after that, was to donate the garden to the government, which would then open it to the public.
That was in 2006. Since then, the garden, which is located on the shores of the Rambler Channel just west of Sham Tseng, has sat in limbo, free from the threat of demolition but with no concrete plans to restore it and open it to the public. The Lees’ original offer to donate the garden was rebuffed by the government. It later changed tack and said it could take over the site, but would not guarantee how it would be used in the future.
As Hong Kong debates how best to preserve its heritage, the case of Dragon Garden poses a question that has proved surprisingly hard to answer: once you’ve saved an historic site, what do you do with it?
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November 5th, 2007
The Orange Julep. Photo by afternoon_sunlight
Montreal has lost one of its more remarkable pieces of kitsch architecture: today, the Canada Motel, a 47-year-old landmark on Taschereau Blvd. on the South Shore, closed its doors for good.
The motel, topped by a giant neon sign, is designed in the style of a typical Quebec farmhouse, and it’s surrounded by old habitant-style cottages containing rooms with themes like “lumberjack” and “garage.” Roxanne Arsenault, an UQÀM student who is writing her master’s thesis on kitsch architecture, has launched a petition to have Longueuil designate the building as an historic structure. She has been joined in her fight by Heritage Montreal and even La Presse offered its support: “Sauvons le motel Canada!” cried a recent headline.
Montreal has a wealth of kitschy commercial architecture from the 1950s and 60s, but much of it is in danger. Few of these kétaine buildings are protected from demolition, including many motels, old fast-food restaurants, advertising structures like the Guaranteed Milk Bottle and even well-known landmarks like the Orange Julep on Decarie. Ben’s, an example of kitsch par excellence, will soon be demolished — or, at best, gutted — for a new condo or office tower.
Last August, Radio-Canada ran a documentary on Montreal’s kitsch architecture and the efforts being made to save it. Roxanne Arsenault makes an appearance, and she counts the Jardin Tiki, a Chinese restaurant on Sherbrooke St. near the Olympic Village, among Montreal’s most endangered kitsch buildings. Other important ones include the Orange Julep and nearby Ruby Foo’s, a Chinese-themed motel and buffet built in the 1960s, when Decarie north of Queen Mary was a popular cruising strip.
Growing up in Calgary, where one of the city’s most enduring icons — the Calgary Tower, an orangey-red observation tower built in 1967 — is a brilliant example of kitsch, I can definitely understand the fascination with and desire to save these buildings. But preserving them is more complicated than it might seem. Unlike other styles of architecture, their appeal rests as much in their spirit as their appearance. Ben’s, without its formica tables, linoleum floor and Poet’s Corner, is little more than a minor example of streamline architecture. The Orange Julep can only function as a fast-food restaurant.
But there are good models of kitsch preservation, like Wildwood, a New Jersey beach town that was a favourite vacation spot for Quebeckers in the 1960s. Blessed with a large collection of motels (including the Quebec Motel and the Montreal Inn) designed in a style known in the United States as “doo wop architecture,” preservation activists in Wildwood have taken to saving old signs, furniture, even toilets. New Jersey has given heritage status to a number of motels, which has released federal preservation dollars. Wildwood business owners have even discovered that kitsch is good for business, as tourists return to Wildwood not only for the beach, but for its retro atmosphere.
Montreal might be well-suited to capitalize on a similar trend. In a review of the city’s kitsch architecture in Canadian Architect magazine, Elsa Lam detected an undercurrent of kitsch in everything from early twentieth-century triplexes to new structures like the multicoloured Palais des congrès.
