PMQ

This handsome complex was built in the early 1950s to serve as the city’s Police Married Quarters. It was reborn in 2014 as a shopping haven with a heritage twist. Today, two seven-story buildings are filled with independent designers’ shops, ateliers, and hip pop-up boutiques selling everything from clothes to handcrafted shoes, jewelry, funky bags, and housewares. You’ll find well-known local brands like Goods of Desire (G.O.D.), a store founded by two local architects that sells furniture, accessories, and gifts with a Hong Kong flair. Stylish coffee shops, teahouses, bakeries, and cafés are also a part of the PMQ mix and offer atmosphere as well as great food.

A renovated police barracks, PMQ is 197,000 square feet of art exhibits, fashion boutiques, and design shops where goods are made with sharp aesthetics and the environment in mind. By Sarah Baird This appeared in the March/April 2016 issue.

The former Police Married Quarters or PMQ has been transformed in recent years from an all-but-forgotten building complex to one of the centers of creative life in Hong Kong. A sort of maker lab meets design house, PMQ just reopened and features dozens of local artists, designers and other creatives all selling their products and working together to create a new creative fervor in the city. Stop by to browse or to check out the night market in the center court.

Before this six-story building became a creative hub, it was a dormitory for policemen. Now it houses design shops, boutiques, studios and even restaurants. As we wandered the hallways while devouring scoops of ice cream from Alice Wild, I stumbled upon a beautiful leather pencil case by a local craftsman from the shop Design PMQ.