The building, with an undulating facade echoing a wave, has an outdoor amphitheater and a massive video screen for advertising and for film and music festivals. Inside will be video walls, artworks and site-specific commissions, all part of the K11 art collection of well-known and emerging Chinese and international artists. Yoshitomo Nara’s “Big Pup Head” at K11. V.Photos “It’s not just looking at beautiful things,” says Cheng. “We want you to really understand who the artist is, the story behind this. The future is about increasing your knowledge capital.” Of course, there will also be things to buy. “We’re curating all the products, too,” he says, adding that all the luxury brands will showcase offerings unique to Musea. When Cheng joined the family business, he also followed in the family tradition of art collecting. While his grandfather focused on antiques, Cheng personally collects an eclectic range of modern and contemporary artists, including Picasso, Tatiana Trouvé, Ai Weiwei, Kaws and Jonas Wood, and has been involved with integrating artworks throughout the complex—from Bharti Kher’s fiberglass elephant covered with thousands of bindis in the Rosewood hotel lobby to Qin Feng’s monumental canvas of calligraphic brushstrokes at K11 Atelier. Hong Kong has been better known as a center for banking than for contemporary art. But that perception has begun to shift in recent years with the launch of the art fair Art Basel Hong Kong (held at a convention center run by New World Development) and a major contemporary art museum, M+, scheduled to open next year. “Our cultural district hopefully will add some spices to that scene,” says Cheng, who is also on the boards of PS1 in New York and the Royal Academy in London and collaborates on shows with arts organizations around the world through K11. “The beauty of K11 is that socially it’s very impactful,” says Cheng. “It proliferates art and design globally and especially in contemporary Chinese culture. K11 was never just a mall.”
Hong Kong entrepreneur Adrian Cheng is poised to extend his K11 art space-shopping mall concept to a giant $2.6bn cultural district overlooking the city's famed harbour. The New World Development scion sees his Victoria Dockside scheme as a means of democratising art that will enable millennials to "appreciate beauty and culture". After launching his first K11 mall a decade ago in Hong Kong, Cheng aims to open a further thousands in China by 2024, with plans already in train to establish malls in Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenyang and Guanghzou.