Talk:Beaconsfield House

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Is it possible to include information that the Beaconsfield Hse (2nd gen) was designed by Ronald Phillips who was also design of the HK city hall and the current Murray Bldg? Enclosed is an old news report about it


a pioneer for culture. 1141 words 2 March 1992 South China Morning Post SCMP 18 English (c) 1992

Ron Phillips with his City Hall. "We ate, drank and slept there while it was going up." AS Hongkong's City Hall celebrates its 30th birthday today, ZELDA CAWTHORNE talks to its designer, who is back to take a look at the city he left 23 years ago.

RONALD Phillips spent a whole morning checking out the Hongkong Cultural Centre before deciding he liked the overall design, but had reservations - especially about the exterior tiling.

"Unfortunately," he concluded, "the surface texture of this huge piece of sculpture forming the auditoria is lost at a distance and appears bland from the harbour and Hongkong Island."

Yet another unpaid critic slinging off at the Urban Council's windowless wonder? On the contrary, if anyone has the right to pass judgement it's Ron Phillips, designer of Hongkong's first modern cultural complex: City Hall.

"One of the two designers," he corrects. "The co-architect of the City Hall was my good friend and colleague Alan Fitch.

"We ate, drank and slept there while it was going up and every day we went to the Cricket Club for lunch. It was a pretty exciting period of our lives."

Sadly, Alan Fitch, like the old Cricket Club which graced Jackson Road, Central, is no more.

"He retired to France and died there," Phillips revealed the other day during a brief visit.

The years have treated the London-born architect well since he left Hongkong in 1969 with his wife Kay and three sons - "our youngest, Simon, was born here" - after 13 years' service with the Public Works Department.

City Hall hasn't fared too badly either, though he fears for its future, says the man who also designed Beaconsfield House, the Murray Building and the Police Training School at Aberdeen, and replanned Kai Tak airport.

"I've heard talk of the City Hall making way for a bigger, more economical development. If that's true, it's very sad," he said.

"I'm not saying it's an architectural gem, but it is part of Hongkong's history and serves as a reminder that this city isn't just dedicated to the mighty dollar.

"I'd say to the community: here's an opportunity to demonstrate democracy and a belief in more lasting values."

Huge excitement gripped Hongkong when City Hall was officially opened by the then governor, Sir Robert Black, on March 2, 1962.

During the month-long festivities, thousands flocked to the waterfront complex to attend concerts - the key attraction was the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent, film shows, art exhibitions and glamorous black tie affairs in the ballroom and banqueting hall, while others rushed to join the libraries or just came to marvel.

Ballroom? Banqueting hall? "Certainly," Phillips confirms. "Originally the top floor was occupied by a ballroom catering for 2,000 people. As well, we had a banqueting hall and a restaurant called the Gavotte."

Had the philistines and diehards of the day had their way, none of it would have happened. A centre for the arts? What a scandalous waste of public money! One of those antiseptic modern buildings instead of a neo-classical beauty? How ghastly!

So the dissenters huffed and puffed. Then the City Hall, built on a prime site on Connaught Road that had previously been a car park, opened its doors and the gripes were forgotten.

"First-rate both in function and in appearance," Sir Robert Black wrote in a letter to the director of public works, Mr Allan Inglis.

Added Sir Robert, "It must also be a matter of pride for yourself as the head of the department which has produced this beautiful addition to the civic architecture of Hong kong."

Thirty years on, Ron Phillips is amused and touched that locals continue to refer to the more visible part of City Hall as the High Block - "a mere dwarf by today's standards" - though he still finds merit in the complex he and Alan Fitch created.

Particularly gratifying are the Concert Hall and City Hall Theatre: both just as they were in 1962 when they had the distinction of being the first major auditoria to be built in Hongkong.

"The design for the Concert Hall was quite complex because we had to provide facilities which were suitable not only for concerts, but could be easily converted for Chinese opera.

"We used an acoustic consultant in England and did all the design by airmail correspondence.

"As well, we had help from the physics department at the University of Hongkong and from Radio Hongkong - all very effective, said Sir Malcolm Sargent, who praised the quality of the acoustics at the end of the opening concert.

"For the wall panels, we imported West African hardwood. Still there and holding up well, I gather."

What has changed is the foyer. A 1962 photograph reveals a handsome carpet with a dark geometric pattern - "designed by us and so large it had to be shipped into Queen's Pier" - white walls and pillars, and attractive lighting including a row of stylised chandeliers.

The effect is clean and classy - very different from the cluttered, often chaotic foyer of today.

"The whole thing needs to be looked at in a fresh way," says Phillips, who also feels the piazza and Memorial Garden could do with new, imaginative paving.

Thirty years of wear and tear underscore how radically the times have changed.

"The City Hall was never designed for the sort of pressures it now has to cope with," observes the architect who vividly remembers the days when cultural pursuits in Hongkong were considered an indulgence - or barely considered at all.

"Concerts and the like tended to be performed in schools and similar institutions, and before I arrived there was a lot of resistance to building a cultural complex.

"With the problems created by illegal immigrants, there was enormous pressure on essential services, so when the City Hall was first proposed, the attitude was: what are we doing building an expensive complex that will only be relevant to a privileged few?

"Sir Alexander Grantham (Hongkong's governor from 1947 to 1957) was the guiding light. He was determined to get things moving and he did."

The passage of time has wrought some extraordinary changes in the city he helped to build, though some things have remained exactly the same, says Ron Phillips, now the grandfather of five and boss of his own architectural firm in Sussex.

"Hongkong still pumps the old adrenalin - and there's that same covered walkway, with its metal trusses, at the Star Ferry concourse on Hongkong side.

"It was put up when Alan and I were building the City Hall and was never meant to be anything but a temporary structure.

"Five years at the most, we figured, and it's still there."

Document scmp000020011122do320094h —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.159.1.162 (talk) 04:19, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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