The Sai Ying Pun district of Hong Kong Island is a bustling city center filled with towering apartment buildings, humble retail stores, and dense market conditions. The base of traditional Chinese culture is mixing with the influx of Western ideas from recently graduated college students.

The need for nighttime entertainment, low living costs and housing, and supporting retail space is filled by the new Sai Ying Pun Wet Market and Microhousing Tower creating a 24 hour functioning building. The market supports the residents of the tower and neighborhood and unites the various generations of Sai Ying Pun to create a more cohesive community.

Lower level retail stores and a nightclub accessed from market levels or street level anchor the market into the Hong Kong terrain. The market itself spans three floors with a mezzanine space created by a folded in adaptive building skin and is pierced by structural cores and a central circulation stair system.

An adaptive skin hugs the inner program, creating the previously mentioned market mezzanine space. It protrudes out at the entrances to the building creating awnings. Perforations in the skin designate public community spaces within the residential tower. This continuity in the skin helps tie together the upper and lower portions of the building.

Photo Credit: Wally Gobetz