Drawings, Bell House (1962–1970), Nathan Road, Hong Kong 香港彌敦道寶寧大廈（1962至1970年）繪圖

The Hong Kong–based practice Andrew Lee King Fun & Associates designed Bell House, a twenty-one-storey apartment complex, between 1962 and 1970. Located on busy Nathan Road in Kowloon, the project incorporates ground-level retail and now sits above the Yau Ma Tei subway station.

Drawings refer to Bell House as a ‘composite building’, an approach made visible on its peach-coloured facade in the vertical voids that define six zones of apartments. The second and fourth of these strips extend through the project’s depth, creating three separate structures (known as A, B, and C). The other three voids allow air and natural light to reach deeper within the three towers themselves. The towers begin to step back on the uppermost floors, further dissolving the rectangular block’s heavy mass.

Andrew Lee King Fun is among the Hong Kong architects credited with architectural solutions, such as the scissor staircase, that answered the urgent need for housing during the 1960s. Bell House was one of his firm’s first projects. The project tracks with a rapid investment in high-rise residential projects throughout the city, particularly in Kowloon, adapting the dense modernist slab to local context and climate.