The Future Has Started Right Now. In Hong Kong.

On a cold morning in February, I am boarding an airplane towards Hong Kong.  An 11-hour flight with Cathay Pacific is in front of me. The flight itself is easygoing---the personnel in Amsterdam is extremely helpful and puts me into an exit row. Service on board, however, is nothing special, in spite of the excellent reputation of Cathay Pacific. Also the food could be better---you can say a lot of positive things about the Netherlands, but the quality of their caterers is none of them. (I write this because on the Hong Kong--Sydney flight with the same airline, food will be fresh and tasty. And also the service will be great.)

Anyway, the seat is fine, there is a complimentary bar in the galley next to me and I manage to get some sleep. Arrived in Hong Kong, I first notice that temperatures are pleasant (15-20°C) and everything is lush and green. It is early morning and my hotel room will not yet be ready. So I decide to save some money and to take the bus into the city, instead of the faster Airport Express train. A decision I do not regret. The bus rides next to towering skyscrapers full of crammed apartments and then crosses a huge suspension bridge which connects the airport with the mainland. Forget the Golden Gate---this is Tsing Ma bridge in Hong Kong.

This is not yet the peak of architectonical grandeur. The next bridge is even more audaciously constructed, apparently passing hundreds of meters above the sea, dwarfing the huge harbor facilities underneath. Stonecutters Bridge, says Wikipedia. The second-longest cable-spanned bridge in the world.




When riding over this huge, prize-winning structure, I feel the same mixture of awe and achievement that you get from approaching the Gizeh pyramids, climbing the Cologne cathedral, or standing witin St. Peter in Rome. (The Cologne reference is no campanilismo---I mean it and I feel it.) A piece of architecture that takes the technical means of a time period to its limits, so challenging and dared that successful completion seems to defy common sense. 

Architecture is not only a skill or a practical solution to a real problem; it also conveys a message. In the case of the Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong, a message of power. When you look from this enormous bridge down on an equally enormous, sheer endless haven, a sea of containers with cranes sticking out their necks here and there, you have the impression that the future is happening here, in East Asia.

Could any project like this be realized in Europe or North America? Do we have the confidence to surpass our own skills, as the US did long ago with the Apollo program? Perhaps it is no chance that such cutting-edge structures are now built in Asia. When even Germans fail to complete an airport (Berlin), a metro line (Cologne) or a concert hall (Hamburg), all characterized by an explosion of costs and ridiculous delays, the West may have lost its potential for showing directions for the future of the planet.

The Stonecutters bridge was built in five years, for an amount of 400 million euros that is moderate, if not small, if one considers the huge technical difficulties. It may have been a question of will and of belief in the first place. When you really want to succeed, when you commit your heart and soul to it, you also make it. Of course, there are good reasons not to spend money on "pure prestige projects". But when the discourse in a society focuses exclusively on the level of contributions to the pension system, or the number of immigrants, one forgets that great societies also need to embark on great challenges: projects which transform one's own ambitions, beliefs and hopes into something that is visible to the world. Projects which are led and executed with ultimate dedication and the absolute will to succeed.

I think the last time that such a success took place in Germany was---ironically enough---the Jewish museum in Berlin. The issue there was not technical feasibility, but a more subtle task: transforming intellectual content and a painful collective memory into sensually perceptible architecture. Daniel Libeskind solved this task in a mindblowing way. But I am pessimistic that a similarly striking success will be realized anytime soon.



Finally, the bus enters a large tunnel and emerges in the city center. I walk about 10 minutes to my hotel, on a street with an endless succession of shops that sell dried seafood products. Bustling unloading activity unfolds. The houses look (comparatively) small and shabby; behind them, huge towers spiral into the skies. What a strange place. I will be here for the next five days---mainly for work, but I will have some time to explore the city. And already now, I am curious what I will discover.