Naming of Residential Building

How do technologies of the self influence the areas in Hong Kong / Asia?

It is a type of lifestyle social structure, by behaving / acting / consuming your individual belong to certain groups / communities. It is a common understanding. Try to find the Logic behind, consequences, and potential that a designer can make reflections on the subject.

What is a Name?

A word of set of words by which a person of thing is known, addressed, or referred to. It’s a tag, a label, a reflection to value, even an expression of emotion nowadays. More than only a name.

In 70’s, names of residential buildings in Hong Kong were more elegant, usually named as house (樓), building (大廈), court (閣), estate (邨) , etc. Those reflects the intimacy and harmony of neighborhood community. Even for the mansions, they were named purer and humbler at that time, for example cottage (廬), residence (居), villas (別墅), etc. which reflects the prestige location and the quality of living.

In 80’s, more and more high-density residential building groups appear due to the rapid incensement of population and economy development. Names in house (苑), garden (花園), plaza (廣場), centre (中心) , etc. appeared especially in new developed districts. Though some of the names were not totally relevant to the building nature itself, yet still acceptable.

90’s is a vanity fair. Property investment is a hot trend making lots of buildings with ‘wow’ names in order to attract the investors, like luxuries court (豪庭), imperial (御), emperor (皇), palace (皇居). And in order to attract more middle classes and capitalists, some of the names even use proverbs satisfying their feeling of being the king, which means the emperor comes to the world. Those are something will not happen in European countries.

Apart from addicted to emperor’s life, the middle classes and capitalist also admired to foreign lifestyles, and the advertisements usually with pretties in blue eyes, gold hairs, nobles riding on horse, etc. Another trend is using Chinese homonyms words, funny is that some of the Chinese homonym's words are with negative meaning, but since they are part of the vocabularies of luxuries brands, those words suddenly became a ‘luxe word’.

In Millennium everything is lost controlled. Property developers named the buildings privatized the surrounding scenes in an exaggerated way. Landfilled areas along coastline will be named as bay, ocean, coast. For those only have half sea views, will be named as peninsula, fantasy of Peninsula Hotel.

Names from building type and location is not enough? Hong Kong people always have creative minds introducing new ways of naming, including use One, Hill and mixed languages. ‘One’ is easy to understand, people loves being number one of everything. For example, One Beacon Hill and One Kowloon. ‘Hill’ has similar idea, being top of the hill, where foreign nobles in Hong Kong loves to live at peak previously.

Mixed languages – Chinese mixed with Japanese character, meaning of Chinese name is totally no relation with the English name. Or even have no English name but in French or Italian words. Why? It is because of how the imagery style advertisements made. A sales technique by using false language tricks.

The current trends of naming Hong Kong residential buildings, there are mainly five way doing it.

First is ‘worship foreign things’ – advertising creators knows Hong Kong people worship in foreign things, they will automatically feel they are living  in foreign places once the name of building with foreign landmarks, like Beverly Hill in Happy Valley, Gold Coast in Tuen Mun and California Garden in Yuen Long.

Second is ‘lordliness’ - similar to what has mentioned in last section, Hong Kong people especially middle classes are addicted, to imperial lives. Kings Park Rise at Ho Man Tin the name in Chinese means Garden for nobles.

Third is ‘reach for the sky’ - makes a illusion that people's identity are high as sky though they are not skyscrapers. Very straight forward example at To Kwa Wan - Sky Tower.

Fourth is ‘numbers’ - people like using One because it means number one. Some will simply use the buildings lot number while more often people love to use lucky numbers.

Fifth is ‘abnormal names’ - meaning of those names no longer related to the the building feature nor location. Those usually are old Chinese words, mixed language, French, Italian and so on.

Relationships between the artifacts to each aspects -

Expressions on each artifact and how it relates to the four aspects will discuss in this chapter.

Body is a connection to the outside world. The ritual is sharing a common culture. People's activities inside a residential building reflects their daily life practice and how they communicate with others - the neighborhood. It's a body movement within the building. It is also an identity for the body. Which location and building that people live usually is a direct reflection of one’s social status. They conern the name more than the size and location. Living a small flat in central is better than a big one in Yau Ma Tei.

In order to gain general’s ‘empathy’ that they are actually in the middle class loop, or even nobles loop, property developer will create a fantasy wrapping up the consumer body, showing how the actors enjoying in the advertisement under a prestige lifestyle - living in palace, riding horse, tea time at garden.

Value of body can also be reflected by the right of naming in terms of ownership percentage. Property investment usually by group of people or companies, depends on project scale. Therefore the one who has the right to name the building, is equal to who own the biggest portion of the property.

Some buildings used people's name to named it. A very direct way telling  people that property are own by them.

Space is about relationship between objects and boundaries. Building itself is a space already.

From interior design and architectural aspects, definition of space is about how people acts inside, how one place connected to other spaces by zoning and circulation providing the best practices to people. A good space should be practical and sometimes should reflects one's identity or character.

Naming of building usually reflects the space of building shape, size, location, surroundings, environment, etc. Social, political and historical factors are put into the consideration as well. By the naming, functions are given to the buildings while activities and events happened by people within a hidden boundary, defining the limits on how far that a given space can be expanded.

However, after years of development, naming of building is less relevant to the space itself, deep like a sea is next to a small river, high as sky at eighty-eight floor is in fact at thirty-three floor because all the unwanted numbers are skipped. Though the names getting fancier and more creative now but on the same time the importance of identity representation is getting less.

As from last chapter talking about background of naming of residential buildings already gives an idea about how time is related to. Compare with old names, it shows the economy and housing development of Hong Kong, and an extension of population. Use of the words are change in parallel with the Trend. As a timeline.

When looking at using old Chinese words in present time, we have a better understanding on the forgotten difficult vocabularies and find out the culture development compare with nowadays. Its a question of memory. People will still use the old names to indicate some locations even those landmarks and well-known buildings has been demolished. Reason is because people did have memories with activities at those places. Similar to giving name to newborn babies. Lots of people will pick same series of wordings within a particular period of time. Series of wordings are shifted by movement of time, sometimes we can guess the building age by its name.

In section body we mentioned some people use their name to name the building. In some cases, people use others name to name the building for the  reason to remember someone. As a timeless thing.

Object has one or more senses, people can see it, touch it, feel it and carry it. Is a material thing. Under this materialistic society, object as a consumption for people to invest, more people are willing to invest if with good names, like the car number license. People buy houses just like buying luxury brand’s bags, credit is given for those with good names and good promotion packages as Hong Kong people always follow the trend with blinded eyes.

Image is an symbol illustrating a normal building into a super one. Advertising companies and property owners packaged the building or project not only for better sales but also forming the brand, create something attractive, easy to remember, touch their desire deep inside the mind. Using the technique of re-production, level of reality is decreased while in balance the appearance is increased. Then first impression gets into consumers’ sight with still visuals or motions, something very direct mapped onto people’s brain.

Sometimes with only the name itself can project an image too. When the building named as garden an image of greenery will appear. When it named as coast, a nice sea view scene immediately show up. When it named as Beverly Hill, people can easily this building style is similar to the original Beverly Hill.

Photographers, film director and movie makers play an important role apart from the advertising company, what kind of atmosphere wants to create is something about their profession.

When image becomes as an icon, or a presentation, series of visuals with party times, pretties and handsome man, etc. can easily be found. From magazine, TV, out-of-home advertising and so on. All those twisted how people value things in Hong Kong, leading their emotion and less care about the actual need – a cozy home.

Naming of residential buildings in Hong Kong is fun and with unlimited possibility, this is all about design. Languages, simple or complication words, related to the environment or only to create wow factors, how it present as a logo or brand, what color to use on fonts, how the entire advertisement will looks like, what kind of image and atmosphere wants to show, and a lot more can think of in relate to design.

We may interpret the phenomenon itself as people trying to use the announcement of how and what they name as a mean to claim respect and envy, a placebo for self promotion. The usage of promotion statics like limited edition unit types, VIP program was well know and commonly used within the industry. The practice itself may consider as encouragement of aimless consumption by enhancing the urge of people’s desire to praise their own sense of superior. This insight create allowance for designers to evaluate the nature of their output for a more social responsible option.