Repainting the History

One of Hong Kong’s first modern skyscrapers — completed in 1973 as Connaught Centre, designed by Palmer & Turner — is being given a new make up coating. The trademark is still there: the circular windows, 1,748 of them, the portholes that made this tower readable from the harbour when it was the tallest building in the city and in Asia. What the photograph holds is the moment before the face is finished. Fresh paint meets the old surface in a hard, almost drawn line. Unpainted facade and weathered coating sit against a clean new coating The contrast is not a defect. It is the picture. The grid of round windows continues across both halves, so the building remains itself even while it is being rewritten. Labour is visible. gondola, rollers, the pace of hands — a classic tower receiving the same ordinary care a person gives a face before going out. Jardine House has always been an icon of modern Central: waterfront, corporate, instantly named by those windows. Here the icon is caught mid-transformation. City maintenance becomes composition. The half-painted elevation is temporary, and that is why it works as art — a landmark wearing two times at once: the years already lived, and the coat that will cover them.