To boost the housing supply is the urgent needs in today HK. Although many resources such as transitional housing and new town development are allocated , GBE has been working on two interesting cases which are to convert the “non-domestic space” to domestic usage. We love to sharing our experience to all reader.

Technical Hurdle for conversion 

There are many technical consideration to the conversion. To list some, the issues cover the “GFA” , “site coverage”, natural lighting and ventilation, open space, Fire safety are all in the radar . On top of this , some tricky issues such as concrete cover ; width of re-entry for open space; barrier free access ; provision of gas aperture , Kitchen, sanitary fitment and the clear headroom for the domestic space are all counting on.

Overcome the hurdle

It is technically complex to resolve all the issues in one scheme. We have to prioritise the amount of effort to resolve each problem. Honestly , some of the technical hurdle may be too costly to resolve or even not possible to overcome

• GFA and site coverage is the most tricky

Among all the hurdles, the GFA and site coverage are the most pertinent and profound factor. We have had a blog talking about the GFA conversion. Honestly , in the case of conversion, we usually have to rebuild the entire GFA calculation and site coverage from scarp. It boils down to the classification of site, open space and roof cover area. It is highly tedious but technical process.

• Lighting and ventilation / fire safety 

Many peers usually have the impression that these are resolvable and always undermine the inherent difficulties. Let us share you one point, the importance of the RHS and prescribed windows are always in the play. Since the RHS is dictated much by site surrounding and site boundary, it eventually restricts the design of light/ventilation very much

The same hurdles happens to the fire safety. Some of the professional may overlook the essence of the concrete cover and believe the fire proofing materials be helpful. Unfortunately , the clear headroom of the space is always very limited and the resulted headroom after the new fire protection layer added may lead to inadequacy, it sounds ridiculous but it did happen.

• Sanitary Fitment and Kitchen 

These are not usually posing difficult , but the problem raised from the gas aperture for the bathroom, the RHS for kitchen and the drainage provision for the sanitary fitment. The gas aperture’s design demands a lot of the space consideration while the kitchen needs the RHS. When all these factors come together, the layout of the apartment becomes quite challenging

Looking forward to the future

While a lot of resources have been allocated to MiC , Transitional housing and New town development , we can see there are some abandoned or under-utilised space in urban area , which can be converted into the habitation purpose. We have attempted successfully such conversion in some old districts in Hong Kong. We hope we can bring more similar cases for sharing in future