Wang Ching Wong
Grounded and In Limbo
This project proposes a comprehensive redesign of the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong & Macau, situated in Government Hill, Central—a historic precinct on the western side of Hong Kong Island known for its layered colonial heritage and dramatic hillside terrain. The consulate currently functions as a gated enclave—physically and programmatically isolated by rigid security boundaries and controlled access points—that restricts public engagement to roughly 30% of the site. By reimagining the consulate as an interstitial, liminal space situated between sovereign territories and political identities, this design challenges entrenched notions of enclosure, hierarchy, and exclusivity typical of diplomatic architecture.
At the core of the project is an inversion of the traditional embassy typology: rather than a fortress-like, opaque mass segregating visitors and workers, the building is embedded into the hillside and partially “buried” beneath a continuous public park that wraps and folds over the architecture. This ground-building strategy emphasizes porous boundaries and layered spatial experiences that blur distinctions between public, semi-public, and private zones. Circulation is rethought as a network of looping, intersecting paths, including an underground tunnel that physically “punches through” the site, connecting secondary streets and creating a new public thoroughfare allowing visitors to traverse the consulate grounds without direct engagement.
The design responds to five distinct user groups—U.S. citizens, non-citizens, security personnel, government workers, and the ambassador—by weaving their spatial narratives into overlapping programs arranged around a central consular service hall. This hall anchors public access, while workers and secure functions are tucked behind layered buffer zones. The project envisions diplomatic space not as a closed enclave, but as a dynamic civic interface—where transparency, interaction, and multiple perspectives invite new relationships between people, place, and power.