ArchitectureWeek People and Places: HEAD Architecture

HEAD Architecture designed House 3098, a three-story home in the Shep Mun Kap village of Hong Kong's Lantau Island. Photo: Graham Uden

HEAD Architecture has designed a home that the firm believes could serve as an architecturally high-quality prototype for the village homes program in Hong Kong's New Territories. House 3098 is a three-story cast-in-place concrete structure that emphasizes possibility while complying with the policy's limitations for building height, area, construction type and other restrictions.

The front and rear elevations of the house provide operable floor-to-ceiling glazing, admitting light and air to all spaces. The rooms of House 3098 are organized around a skylit three-story atrium space that provides daylight and stack ventilation.

Ground-floor kitchen and dining spaces. Photo: Graham Uden

Increasing the sense of openness, glass is also used for guardrails and many doors. Bamboo floors and LED lighting have been installed throughout the house. A rooftop patio provides unobstructed views of the surrounding landscape, and support for a future green roof has been provided.

Looking down and across the atrium space. Photo: Graham Uden

In Hong Kong since 1972, a policy has existed that entitles every indigenous adult male villager in the New Territories to apply to build a small house within their village. So long as these homes adhere to a set of prescribed limitations, the buildings are exempt from a number of permitting and design-review requirements.

House 3098 master bedroom. Photo: Graham Uden

In addition to its patent gender bias, the New Territories Exempted House Policy, also known as the Small House Policy, critics claim that the policy is unsustainable and has produced poor-quality homes and public health and planning problems in villages throughout Hong Kong. Abuse and corruption are also cited as widespread.