Hong Kong's forgotten villages

The Asia has seen tremendous growth in the recent years in all sectors and particularly in the construction field.

A growing city where before there were only VILLAGES, SKYSCRAPERS where before there were only split-level houses and finance centers where before they were not even thought. Hong Kong is exactly this, a reality where the contrasts are visible every day and in every part of the city. When we think about Hong Kong there are a few things that we always think, in particularly the skyscrapers, the banks and the shops. But this is only the face that Hong Kong offers to a passing tourist or a regular worker, in fact this great city offer more, there is a face of Hong Kong neglected and hidden that only few know. Hong Kong offers as mentioned above, many

different shades, and one of these is represented by the architectural heritage hidden in the new territories or simply overshadowed by the huge city palaces. THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGES OF HONG KONG are one of these realities. They represent precisely the identity and the historical and cultural heritage, which was for a long time forgotten, only recently is becoming interesting for the local government and cultural authorities. Today the problem about the CULTURAL HERITAGE is the focus of the politics, of the media, the architecture. We are talking about the heritage every day and in every sector. Each individual tries to find an answer about the problem of the conservation and the future possibility of our heritage, for sure with different intention, but at the end is a topic which it involved every person directly or indirectly. The range of the heritage is really vast, it includes documents or landscapes, THE HABITAT surrounding us the architecture, etc.

The cultural heritage is the set of all the changes that our predecessors that have left on the territory. Understand what they have created with their minds for know the past mean understand the present, our mistakes and our identities. In the answer of the

social question about the identity there is one of the reason for the interesting a bout the cultural heritage of today.

MY RESEARCH has dealt with this reality of second-rate and its possible future developments. In particular, I wanted to analyze three villages linked by a single thread. The study done by me arises precisely the goal of emphasizing the relationship between a megalopolis like hong kong towards its historical heritage. I considered three villages located respectively in three different zone; highly URBANIZED AREA, expansion area and rural area. This was done in order to give a general overview of the villages situated in Hong Kong, in fact these three case studies give an overview of the situation of all the villages. In particular, I focused on one of these three NGA TSIN WAI, which is located in the heart of Hong Kong inside a very complex system..