Hong Kong is like a dragon. It changes its skin over and over. It’s urban fabric alters constantly, new buildings become extremely fast the landmarks of the city to be surpassed after a short time.

The skyscrapers that host banks and multinational’s head offices are in competition to emerge in a saturated skyline.

These are the buildings that create the most familiar image of Hong Kong, with the hillside and the Peak behind.

The city extends in a compact formation following a close and continuous plot made of highrises; every building in Central, the financial district, is filled of lights effects and new materials to be part of the moving vertiginous setting, stretched along HK Island without interruption.

Big design firms and internationally acclaimed professionals are called to design the main skyscrapers, the shopping malls and the city’s gates.

Many among the main buildings which form Hong Kong’s outside image towards the rest of the world carry the signature of Sir Norman Foster; the futuristic international Chek Lap Kok airport, the Kowloon-Canton Railway Station, the Superterminal 1, in addiction to the famous skyscraper, seat of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank.

Another Hong Kong’s symbol, of relatively recent construction, is the Bank of China’s tower, designed by I. M. Pei.

In Hong Kong, besides the notable architecture, there’s another fascinating space, almost indifferent to the built one: this is the space between the buildings, crammed with people, signs and markets.

It’s a space of transition, full of energy, in a built framework that keeps changing according to the speed of the new buildings.

These are the two coexisting aspects that will determine the structure of the Hong Kong architecture’s sector inside the exposition "Hong Kong, l’Isola dei Nove Draghi" that will take place at the Castle of Pralormo.

The great screen of skyscrapers and lights formed by the continuous front of buildings acquires an even higher intensity thanks to the superposition of signs, fabrics, roofs trough which the light filters into Hong Kong’s streets.

The design project, realized by Coex group, is structured through paths that reproduce the double experience of Hong Kong’s space.

In the volume of the ancient granary it will be possible to walk trough sections of the city, that will talk, while experiencing it, about that complex and vibrant space.

Permasteleesa is giving for the exhibition panels and structures, some of which have been used in the Chek Lap Kok airport’s construction.

The drawings offered by Norman Foster’s office will be exhibited in this space that narrates the city. This will allow to approach Hong Kong at different scales and to know these remarkable architectures.

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