Mad Monastry

A Hong Kong building that's been piquing my interest since I first caught glance on the MAD100 is the Miu Fat buddhist monastery in deepest Kowloon, near the Shenzhen border. My first guess as to what was inside was a stadium to watch some martial arts with raked seating. But further investigation (talking to my friend Laz) revealed it is in fact a monastery.

You have to climb quite a few steps to get up to the main space, but it does provide some nice framed views of the surrounding hills.

Inside it is slightly bizarre and a little more industrial than you might think, but I quite like that. It's certainly different, and it isn't over-run with mainland tourists, a la big buddha.

Outside on the terrace the aggressive structure is pretty nice (I'm sure it was sold as 'uplifting'), though the default Hong Kong cladding solution of beige tiles is a disappointment. You can imagine if they built this in Japan with really nicely finished polished concrete it would look amazing, but all things said, for HK, it's still something different, and something interesting.

While this place is a bit of a mission to get to from HK Island, if you mix it up with a bit of Mong Kok (or a bike shop in Yuen Long...) it's a fun day trip. Cool place.

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