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The following is issued on behalf of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority:
The Board of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority held its fifth meeting today (May 25). The following is the transcript of remarks by the Chairman of the Board, Mr Henry Tang, at a media session after the meeting (English portion):
The Board held our fifth meeting today and discussed four major topics:
* Development of arts and cultural software in Hong Kong
* Planning design principles
* Progress of preparing the development plan
* WKCD organisational set-up
Arts and Cultural Software in Hong Kong
The Government and the Board are fully aware of the importance of cultural software to the creation of a world-class cultural district. While the Board's priority at this stage is the overall development plan for arts and culture, we also agreed that the development of software with our vision of where we are going in terms of software development, so that it will complement and go hand in hand with the hardware development, is essential.
If you have watched the video cast of my conclusion, you will have a very good idea of what we have discussed and what our ideas, what our plans are.
The Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr Tsang Tak-sing, will say more about software development shortly.
Planning Design Principles
Today we have discussed a set of guiding principles to convey to the conceptual planners our philosophy of how we see the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District. The seven key "planning design principles" will be put forward for consultation during the Stage 1 public engagement.
Mr Ron Arculli, Chairman of the Development Committee will later elaborate on those seven key principles.
Development Plan and Students' Participation
This is the very interesting aspect of it. The selection of consultants for the development plan is in its final stage, and we will soon announce the appointment of the project consultant and three conceptual plan consultants.
We have had an overwhelming response from architects from around the world. We are indeed honoured and we are excited by the worldwide interest that this project has generated.
Earlier on we have decided that the design of the individual arts and culture facilities will be selected through a competitive process. The Board sees the need to promote local designs and has decided to engage architectural and design students as well as visual arts students in the design of smaller scale public facilities in the cultural district, in order to promote architecture as well as design.
Organisational Set-up
We also decided on the organisational set up of the Authority. We will start the global search of the Chief Executive Officer very soon. Our aim is to have a successful candidate on board before the end of this year. Mr Sin Chung-kai, Chairman of the Remuneration Committee will fill you in with more details later.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, May 25, 2009
Issued at HKT 20:47
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