Prestigious award: Director of Architectural Services Yue Chi-hang (second left) receives the ULI global award at a prize-presentation ceremony in Las Vegas.

Hong Kong Wetland Park has won the Urban Land Institute's 2007 Global Awards for Excellence, the 14th award the project has received.

The park, designed and developed by the Architectural Services Department, is one of the five developments to win the award. The other four winning projects are Seattle's High Point and Philadelphia's Urban Outfitters Corporate Campus, Poland's Manufaktura, and Paris' Meudon Campus. The Wetland Park is the only development in the Asia-Pacific region to win the award.

The prize-presentation ceremony was held at the ULI Fall Meeting in Las Vegas on October 26. The jury said the park has succeeded on all counts, demonstrating a sound investment of public funds.

"Having started out as a prosaic wetlands conservation initiative, the Hong Kong Wetland Park blossomed in its planning stage into an educational facility to demonstrate best practices in environmental reclamation and sustainability and also into a tourist attraction," the jury said.

Great honour

Speaking at the prize-presentation ceremony, Director of Architectural Services Yue Chi-hang said it is a great honour to accept the prestigious award.

"Hong Kong Wetland Park is a complex project whose initial brief presented us with the enormous challenge of how to impose a major tourist attraction and environmental educational facility upon a fragile ecological mitigation area without resulting loss of habitat or conservation value.

"It however also provided us with the opportunity to highlight the uniqueness of Hong Kong's important wetland habitats and make them available for public appreciation by a population more accustomed to our dense urban environment and shortage of recreational space."

More accolades

The park will receive its 15th award on November 2 in Boston as it has been selected as the winner of the 2007 Honour Award of the 21st Annual Excellence on the Waterfront Awards Programme.