Imagine there was no Macau Tower, no Grand Lisboa, no Bank of China, AIA or FIT buildings, no Wynn Macau, Starworld, One Central or Cultural Centre, no Cotai, One Oasis, no airport. And only one bridge. It really was a different world not so long ago.
It was therefore with special interest that I attended the public talk given by architect Thomas Daniell, a professor at Kyoto University, and formerly the Head of Architecture and Design at the University of St. Joseph, presenting the results of his research fellowship. “Unbuilt Macau” examines the unrealized and often visionary proposals for reclaimed land in Macau, mostly in the period immediately prior to the handover of the former Portuguese colony to China in 1999. Daniell’s research focused on five main areas; ZAPE, NAPE, Praia Grande, Cotai and Hengqin New Area on the southern-most tip.
Going back to the late 1800’s, there were elaborate plans for reclamation around the Inner Harbor, but they were always regarded as being too expensive. Although significant work there began in 1910, it was interrupted by the First World War, and when it restarted there were insurmountable problems with silting and disputes over the extent of Portuguese territorial control, so it was decided to abandon the projects and focus on creating an Outer Harbor facing onto the Pearl River Delta. A diplomatic agreement was made with China in 1920, and work began in 1921.
Five million meters of sludge was dredged from the riverbed, which was transformed into 125 hectares of new land that straightened and widened the eastern seaboard of Macau for the new port facilities, where ZAPE is today.
In 1966, Macau’s gambling monopoly and control of all of the ZAPE land was granted to entrepreneur Stanley Ho and his new company STDM, due to his promise to evict the squatters then occupying ZAPE and develop it following this masterplan.
STDM started construction on the Lisboa Hotel and Casino in the appointed area, and it was completed in 1970. A few nearby buildings and streets also followed the 1964 masterplan. STDM attempted some revisions including a proposal for sports facilities and a bull-fighting ring, but for the next few years ZAPE was mostly left undeveloped.
A sudden increase in land prices in the late-1980s caused a renewed interest in expanding the NAPE area and developing Praia Grande. A public-private entity called the Nam Van Lakes Corporation was established to administer development in Praia Grande, but nonetheless the area languished. In 2003, Nam Van Square, adjacent to Macau Tower was built. This was followed by an urban park adjacent to the third bridge, and an unbuilt proposal for a Dragon Boat viewing stand.
The other major reclamation project begun in the 1990s was Cotai, six square kilometers of new land that turned the islands of Taipa and Coloane into a single landmass. The islands were first physically connected in 1968 by a two-kilometer-long causeway which became increasingly surrounded by mud and silt, so reclamation was not difficult. The original plan was that the area would be a new town for 150,000 people.
The 1994 model for Cotai showed mainly podium-tower structures with all public parking located underground. To the east was an infrastructural zone incorporating the airport, which was then under construction, a projected new passenger ferry terminal, and a container port. A strip of parkland separated this from the central zone, which contained relatively large building areas for housing and retail. To the north were smaller building areas and another green area adjoining Taipa.
To the west, adjacent to the Lotus Flower Bridge that links Cotai to Hengqin Island, there was a tourist complex named “Mega City,” which contained a hotel and convention hall, a theater, a swimming pool, golf, tennis, not to mention an artificial ski slope and an artificial beach.
The Macau Airport opened in 1995, for which Portuguese President Mário Soares made an official visit to Macau. Stanley Ho presented him a scale model of his own scheme to turn Cotai into a leisure zone containing ten hotels, an exhibition center, and a theme park, but nothing came of this.
Instead, after the handover, the government began to think about the possibility of turning Cotai into a casino resort area. On 18 July 2001, a revision of the Cotai masterplan was announced. Similar to the transformation of NAPE, main arteries were kept but some of the planned secondary roads were erased in order to create larger lots for integrated resorts. Housing was removed and the planned hospital relocated to Coloane.
The government showed the new plan to the international gaming corporations. In 2002, after deciding on the location of the Sands casino in NAPE, Sheldon Adelson visited the swampy surroundings of the Estrada do Istmo and, in an epiphany similar to Bugsy Siegel’s vision of a gambling paradise in the empty Nevada desert, imagined a magnificent avenue lined with luxury hotels and casinos: the Cotai Strip.
Adelson commissioned his own Cotai masterplan, the emphasis being on the provision of outdoor public spaces for movement, based on the (mistaken) assumption that most visitors enjoy walking along the strip. This was to have contained three major public spaces: a Water Park, a Tropical Garden and a Grand Falls, the latter intended as a venue for street performances. These ideas were never implemented, and the Venetian was the only development to follow the regulations.
In 2005, just as the Cotai reclamation was completed and the Cotai Strip beginning to take shape, Eduardo Tavares proposed a World Cultural Forum on an enormous strip of land north of NAPE, a utopian diagram of East meeting West and a deeply optimistic statement about what Macau could and should be. Today we see this area is now the landing stage for the HK-Macau-Zhuhai bridge, vast immigration buildings and land set aside purportedly for social housing projects.
It is fascinating to see how the numerous, often radical, unbuilt proposals over the years by multiple architects, many of which arose through international competitions, contribute to an alternative history of Macau: a phantom Macau superimposed on the real Macau that shows what might have been, and suggests what is still possible.
