Visitors inspect an aerial photograph of Kowloon Walled City at the ‘Building M+’ exhibition at Hong Kong’s Artistree.

Can a museum collect architecture?

The answer, say the curators of Hong Kong’s museum of visual culture, is yes.

Though it won’t open its doors until 2017, M+ has already staged a number of exhibitions across the city, from 2012’s multi-site “Yau Ma Tei” to last year’s “Inflation!,” a collection of inflatable sculptures displayed on the grounds of its future home, the West Kowloon Cultural District. Its latest, “Building M+: The Museum and Architecture Collection,” on display at ArtisTree through Feb. 9, showcases the museum’s growing architecture collection along with the five shortlisted entries for the design of its 60,000-square meter, 5 billion Hong Kong dollar (US$644 million) space.

In less than a year, M+ has acquired 1,000-odd pieces aimed at widening the conversation around architecture. Almost 100 are in the show, including traditional scale models from firms such as Steven Holl Architects, drawings by Frank Lloyd Wright and Paul Rudolph, photographs such as Andreas Gursky’s shot of Hong Kong’s HSBC building, and imagined cities built inside the online virtual world “Second Life.”

Also among them is Herzog & de Meuron and TFP Farrells’s winning museum design for M+, which stood out from the competition by highlighting the museum’s “found space,” a working train tunnel running beneath it.

Herzog & de Meuron and TFP Farrells’s winning design for the M+ museum

The man behind the exhibition, M+ design and architecture curator Aric Chen, spoke to the Journal by email about starting a collection, the intensity of Hong Kong and the mystery of a drawing by Lloyd Wright.

What was the toughest thing about putting together this show?

Mr. Chen: Besides finding the historical materials–a lot has simply been lost over the years–I think the biggest challenge was figuring out how to start a collection from scratch. In this sense, there was nothing to build on; it was like staring at a blank page.

What’s your goal in collecting architecture for M+?

M+ is an ambitious museum, and the same goes for our architecture collection. We want to document and preserve the past–but also make sense of the present, and look toward the future. And we want to do it with a global perspective–though seen from the vantage point of where we are in Hong Kong, China and Asia. We’re just getting started, but the payoff is that I think this bigger picture is beginning to come together.

Are there any particularly intriguing objects in this show?

One example: We have a Frank Lloyd Wright drawing of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (one of six that are now in our collection). It’s a proper drawing of a stair, except in one corner, one of Wright’s Japanese colleagues or draftsmen scribbled some kind of poem that’s partly in the Chinese language, not just Chinese characters. It’s been hard to decipher, and more research is needed. But while we knew about it when we acquired the drawing, it’s an example of the small mysteries that  these objects can hold.

Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto’s study models for the Serpentine Pavilion 

Any other standout exhibits?

Each one has its own story. But I think some of the objects that have really resonated with the audience include the model of the old Peak Tower; Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto’s study models for his Serpentine Pavilion of last year; Ian Lambot’s striking aerial photograph of Kowloon Walled City; and MAD’s Beijing 2050 project, which includes 3 models of speculative projects for Beijing for the year 2050.

What kind of dialog do you hope to inspire in the local community as well as in the global art world?

Hong Kong is one of the most intense architectural environments in the world, and while we experience this every minute of every day, many people may not think of what they see in terms of “architecture.” A better understanding of architecture can prompt a demand for better buildings and cities.

At the same time, M+ is a global institution–the first of its kind in Asia. All creative disciplines benefit by having an institutional voice telling their stories to a broader public, which benefits in turn. We hope we can contribute this voice to the global discussion, which can only get richer by having more perspectives.

> via WSJ