Herzog & de Meuron’s T-shaped museum in Hong Kong is ready to open

In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, masterplanned by Foster + Partners, has been completed the M+ museum of visual culture. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with the architecture studio Farrells, it is located on the coast of Victoria Harbour and is dedicated to visual art, architecture, design and moving image.

The porject consists of two volumes, one vertical and another horizontal, which intersecating each other form the shape of an inverted T. The three-storey horizontal volume contains the majority of the public facilities: galleries, lecture halls, a shop and a research center. The interior is in concrete and the foyer is diagonally cut by a lightwell, around which is developed the museum's main circulation. Above the horizontal block, which is topped with a roof garden, a tower reaches other 12 floors. Designed to give to the museum a presence on the harbour skylinet, it hosts office spaces and is topped with restaurants, bars and a sky garden as well.

“For art to enter into the life of a city like Hong Kong it has to come from below, from its own foundations,” said Jacques Herzog, “Our M+ Project does exactly that, by literally emerging from the city's underground”.