Hong Kong is notoriously unsentimental when it comes to preserving its heritage, constantly demolishing anything remotely old to make way for brand new glass and steel skyscrapers. That said, there was still plenty to appreciate from an architecture and design perspective during my recent trip there (even if none of it was really mid century or modernist).

Highlights included:

– The three brightly coloured interconnected buildings in Wan Chai: the Blue House, Yellow House and Orange House. Now a grade one historic building, the Blue House is a four-storey tenement building and one of the few remaining examples of a tong lau: a style of residential building notable for balconies that were built in the late 19th century in Hong Kong and southern China. The Blue House houses a museum and contains private living quarters. The Orange and Yellow Houses are also primarily residential buildings featuring around 20 residential flats each.

– The old Hollywood Road Police Married Quarters, a grade III listed 1950s building now used as a mixed-use venue for arts and design. In 2014, after nearly 15 years of disuse, the building was renamed PMQ and opened to the public. The building’s residential units were turned into studios, shops and offices for selling pleasing but overpriced design tat and hosting exhibitions.

– Hong Kong Cultural Centre, a tiled salmon pink building which was designed in the 1970s but only opened in the late 1980s (and therefore has elements of both decades in its design).

– Other interesting modern buildings