The escalator towards Roof Garden. Photo: Dan Leung. M+, Hong Kong
SUHANYA RAFFEL:
We’re now going to head outside, and up onto M+’s Roof Garden. This will take you out of M+, so we recommend you save this stop for when you’re ready to leave. To reach the garden, we’d like to suggest that you take the scenic route. Return to the Ground Floor, head out onto the Horizon Terrace, and follow the building around to your left until you reach the base of the raked seating that’s actually the roof of the Learning Hub. You can pause this track and restart it once you’re there.
Here you should see that the roof steps lead you to a very long escalator. You’re now in one of those shaded, semi-outdoor spaces we talked about earlier in the tour. Turning away from M+, you can see the Art Park stretching out before you. This is a fully public area—from here you can move easily from one part of the Cultural District to another. The long escalator will take you up to the Roof Garden, and the steps leading to it are their own kind of public space. You’ll probably see people sitting here: friends catching up, families relaxing between activities, solo visitors taking in the view.
As you move on, heading up the steps and onto the escalator, you can get an even greater sense of this openness, even though you’re surrounded by the museum. Look up, and you can see the open sky above; looking out, you can see the rippling water of Victoria Harbour; the building’s external walls are covered with cultivated plant life; and glancing around you can glimpse into the gallery spaces through the glass cut outs.
Travelling up this escalator is one of the best opportunities to recognise just how uniquely open the design of M+ is for a civic institution.