Built Heritage

This Brief is the first comprehensive coverage of law and policy intended to protect built heritage in Hong Kong. Although characterized as a city of skyscrapers and modernity, Hong Kong has a rich cultural heritage and a surprisingly rich built heritage. The text considers what “built heritage” means in Hong Kong and what built heritage there is in Hong Kong.

This book approaches the field of built heritage and its practices by employing the concept of heterotopia, established by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. The fundamental understandings of heritage, its evolution and practices all reveal intrinsic heterotopic features (the mirror function, its utopic drive, and its enclave-like nature).

This book presents the preservation principles and the current environmental challenges relating to monitoring heritage sites and buildings under the effects of climate change. It provides a clear overview of conservation action levels and the importance of participation and cooperation between them, and discusses evaluation and management methods, thermal comfort for the common usages, and conceptual methods for enhancing the built heritage.

This book examines management of the built cultural heritage through the use of the concept of cultural significance. It considers how and why cultural significance is assessed and how it can be used as an effective focus and driver for management strategies and processes.

Several international and European institutions have given increasing importance to sustainable approaches to our existing building stock and the role of built heritage in this process.