PMQ 元创方

About PMQ

Repeated doorways and open corridors preserve the rhythm of the residential buildings, while the central courtyard provides a useful pause between floors. Along Staunton Street, granite steps and retaining walls recall the earlier school that occupied the site. Explore the building as well as the merchandise: the interest lies in how small former homes have become working creative spaces, with individual studio opening hours varying.

The site was originally home to the Central Government School, founded in 1862 on Gough Street and moved here in 1889, when it was renamed Victoria College and then, in 1894, Queen's College. The school building was destroyed during the Japanese occupation in 1941 and demolished in 1948. In 1951, amid rising demand for police recruits, the site was fitted with 140 single-room and 28 double-room units to house married junior officers serving at the nearby Central Police Station.

PMQ retains two seven-storey dormitory blocks, Staunton and Hollywood, named after nearby streets, and the former Junior Police Call clubhouse (少年警讯会所), along with the quarters' original front gate and granite steps and walls surviving from Central School (中央书院). A 600-square-metre hall, QUBE, occupies the second-floor courtyard between the blocks, linked by a fourth-floor sky garden, PLATEAU, while the ground-floor plaza, once a playground and car park, became the 1,000-square-metre Aberdeen Courtyard and Marketplace beneath a canopy of ultraviolet-blocking glass.

Beneath the central plaza, an underground gallery called Glimpse PMQ displays two of the longest sections of Central School's original granite foundations, together with six excavated floor tiles and other architectural fragments recovered from the site during the course of redevelopment work.

What to look for

• Open corridors and repeated former residential units now contain design studios and shops.
• Granite steps and retaining walls on the Staunton Street side survive from the earlier school site.

Location & getting there

Getting to PMQ

Go to PMQ at 35 Aberdeen Street in Central. Begin in the ground-level courtyard and use the building directory to choose open studios in the Hollywood and Staunton blocks.