ENG-1957 — Page 30

REVIEW

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architect therefore made the main entrance at roof-level. Hong Kong architecture was well abreast of world trends. The speed of construction also made new records for Asia. In 1951 the Grantham Training College was planned and nearly finished within the same year. Completion of a multi- storey ferro-concrete building within twelve months of start- ing operations on the site became, and still is, a commonplace.

Government architects broke away early from traditional styles. The bold design of buildings erected by the Govern- ment from 1948 onwards put the official seal on the archi- tectural 'New Look'. Official 'quarters at Leighton Hill, Queen's Gardens and King's Park were of reinforced con- crete, carrying six or seven storeys on sites which had held only two storeys before. The plans of these buildings, re- peated in later constructions, followed the same basic pattern, thus achieving the economy of series-production. Quarters built for the Police Force showed that official architecture was now as elegant and clean-edged as the most advanced private building anywhere. The Services, too, abandoned the depressing barracks-style housing which hitherto had varied little from Aden to Hong Kong. An estate for service families in Kowloon, begun in 1950, provided three-storey blocks of flats grouped in pleasant terraces and set back from the street line on small lawns.

One official landmark which was shortly to vanish was the Colonial Secretariat, built during the governorship of Sir John Davis in 1847 at the precise cost of £14,300. 3s. 10d. A start was made in 1951 upon the erection of the first section of a much larger building, matching the needs of an ex- panded Civil Service and designed to house, in addition to the Secretariat itself, many Government departments. On the principle of the sectional bookcase, the site plan of these Central Government Offices allowed for two more blocks to be added at a later date. The crumbling Victorian porticos of the old Secretariat itself disappeared in 1954, to be re- placed with a severely practical central section, with little

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