A concrete maze

Hong Kong's M+ wants to be a global titan of art, to rival the likes of Tate Modern. But did its architects, Herzog & de Meuron, overdo the cement?

- Oliver Wainwright

BY NIGHT, THE HONG KONG SKYLINE is one giant electric rainbow, a riot of twinkling, swirling lights. Some of its towers carry pixellated messages across their facades. Others throb with the logos of businesses and banks. But one illuminated sign now stands out from the rest. This big rectangle operates on an entirely different frequency. One minute, it pulses with animated op-art patterns. The next, it delivers a slideshow of mid-century furniture and architectural models. Then it erupts with a cloud of pink cherry blossom against a bright blue sky, creating a surreal backdrop to the ferries crossing the harbour.

"It's like a pirate ship," says Jacques Herzog, one half of Herzog & de Meuron (HdM), the Swiss architects behind this 20-storey-high building cum billboard, "sailing into the commercial landscape with an artistic message." The supersized screen signals the presence of M+, billed as "Asia's first global museum of visual culture", which opened its doors in November 2021 during the pandemic. Two years on, despite lockdown travel restrictions, it has received more than 5 million visitors, making it one of the most popular art museums in Asia.

Its name stands for “Museum and more" - but more of what exactly? Heft, for one. Up close, M+ is less plucky pirate ship, more colossal tanker. It contains more than double the exhibition space of London's Tate Modern, mostly laid out on one single, gargantuan floor. This vast array of galleries is jacked up over the West Kowloon waterfront, with public decks above and below it where visitors gather, as on the deck of a liner, to gawp at the mesmerising panorama of Victoria Harbour.