The opening of Hotel Lisboa in 1970 was a watershed moment in Macao’s history, heralding the arrival of a glitzy and extravagant gaming complex that would dominate the local casino industry for decades to come. Unlike the sleazy, no-frills casinos that came before it, Hotel Lisboa offered a more sophisticated experience, complete with world-class gaming rooms, luxury accommodation, restaurants and an array of entertainment options. As Hong Kong Canadian writer Rebecca Lo points out, the casino’s establishment signalled a seismic shift for the former Portuguese enclave, away “from essentially being a very small, sleepy town.”
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A former interior designer, Rebecca Lo knows more about the Hotel Lisboa than the average Hongkonger. For starters, the 56-year-old has been a regular visitor to Macao for both work and family reasons. Her paternal aunt, Lo Li Fong, lived in the territory, along with her three children and husband Wong Tong Ming, a respected local photographer, who ran Fotografo Artes (愛雪攝影公司) on Travessa do Auto Novo between 1963 and 2003. More importantly, Rebecca Lo’s father, Lo Wing Cheung, was one of the experts who helped to bring the Hotel Lisboa into fruition through his work as an assistant architect for Eric Cumine Associates, the Hong Kong architectural firm founded by its eponymous Eurasian architect.
Macao connections
Born in 1934, Lo Wing Cheung had been groomed into becoming an architect by his family from a young age but when he was 13 his father died.
The senior Lo’s passing left the family struggling financially. Lo Wing Cheung was still able to get a good education by acquiring scholarships, as well as an apprenticeship in architecture at the age of 18, which he held down while pursuing even classes in draughtsmanship at the now-defunct Hong Kong Technical College. But without being able to get a degree from an accredited university, he never received recognition as a full architect.
“My father finished his studies when he was in his early 20s, and then he got a job with Eric Cumine in 1954,” Rebecca Lo says. “He never got his architect licence, so he couldn’t stamp drawings.”
All the same, Lo Wing Cheung ended up working for Eric Cumine for 20 years and was involved in several major works, one of which happened to be Hotel Lisboa. “Eric [Cumine] knew that dad had a connection to Macao already [so], he was assigned this project.” Rebecca Lo says, adding that the casino-resort would end up being one of her father’s pet projects for a number of reasons. One was the family connection in Macao, which meant Lo Wing Cheung would regularly travel to the city at a time when doing so involved a leisurely two to three hour journey by boat.
Of course, he also relished the opportunity to work on such a challenging, diverse project. “Hotels are probably one of the most complicated disciplines because they involve so many aspects,” Rebecca Lo points out. “There’s the office, there’s gaming, there are the restaurants, there is the accommodation. There are so many aspects to a hotel and specifically a casino hotel, so I think dad found that a challenge, and he enjoyed it.”
Lo Wing Cheung would end up working on Hotel Lisboa during the entire duration of the project, from its inception in circa 1963 through to its completion in 1970. Rebecca Lo mentions that her father, along with others, were assigned to “do the site visits” and “work on a lot of the nitty gritty details,” while Eric Cumine was in charge of business development, as well as the initial sketches.
The Hotel Lisboa’s architectural legacy
In designing Hotel Lisboa, a number of feng shui elements were implemented in order to solidify its future success, although the hotel’s then proprietor, Stanley Ho, would flatly deny such claims, declaring in separate interviews that “Lisboa was designed by Eric Cumine, a relative of mine…who knows nothing about feng shui” and that “all my life I never believed in feng shui.”
Regardless, it is often said that the Lisboa’s hotel building was designed to resemble a Chinese birdcage in order to “trap” guests. Likewise, the entrance to the hotel has a structure that mirrors bat wings, a nod to the Chinese idea that bats (蝙蝠, biān fú) represent good fortune, as their name in the language is a homophone for “blessings everywhere (遍福, biàn fú).”
The circular structure of the property was also not accidental, according to Rebecca Lo who recalled a conversation that she had with her father about this particular design element of the hotel. “The windows are circular, the residential tower is essentially like a cylinder and the circulation around Hotel Lisboa is intentionally confusing because it’s all circles over circles, so you don’t ever really walk in a straight line,” she remembers. The idea behind this was apparently to symbolise the lack of a beginning and end, encouraging patrons to remain in the complex – and hopefully spend – for as long as possible.
Of course, there are also the early postmodern elements of the hotel, as exemplified by the bright orange of its facade and its eclectic mix of architectural motifs. Rebecca Lo hails this an important example of modern and early post modern architecture, which is all the more significant when this particular style of design was rarely seen in both Macao and Hong Kong.
From buildings to Buddhism
Apart from Hotel Lisboa, Lo Wing Cheung also worked on other notable properties, with Rebecca Lo singling out two Hong Kong-based projects – So Uk Estate and Harbour City. The former is a now-demolished public housing development completed in 1963, which housed many mainland refugees and was the childhood home of various future Hong Kong celebrities such as Beyond lead singer Wong Ka Kui and Cantopop legend Sam Hui.
Harbour City, on the other hand, is renowned for being Hong Kong’s largest shopping mall. Built gradually over the course of the 1960s and 1980s, the complex currently features more than 450 retailers and 80 food and beverage establishments, all set against the stunning backdrop of Victoria Harbour. That same project would also signal the beginning of the end for Eric Cumine Associates, as the company was sued by the mall’s owner, Wharf Holdings, in 1983 for allegedly failing to fully develop the available floor space, resulting in legal action that would hound Cumine for years to come.
Lo Wing Cheung never saw Cumine’s struggle first hand, as he had immigrated to Canada with his family in 1975. He continued to chart a path for himself as an architect in Toronto and was helped by the fact that Eric Cumine allowed him to take the drawings he had done for the company with him.
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“He’s [my dad] kind of like a favourite of Eric’s,” Rebecca Lo says. “Eric, at the time, had over 100 people working for him, but dad worked for him for a really long time, so when he left, he was able to take all of these drawings – because he needed to get a job in Canada and to prove that he could do what he said he could.”
While architecture dominated Lo Wing Cheung’s professional life, Rebecca Lo notes that her father’s one true passion in life was Buddhism, which included “interpreting Buddhist scripture and sharing it with an audience.” Upon his early retirement in 1992, Lo Wing Cheung devoted the rest of his life to its teachings.
He would remain in Toronto in his twilight years, with Rebecca Lo – who had permanently relocated to Hong Kong in 2000 – making trips back to Canada to spend time with her father. It was during these brief, fleeting moments that she gained a momentary glimpse into his life as an architect and his work on properties such as the Lisboa.
“There are a lot of projects that I would have now really liked to have talked to him about,” she says. “But, we just didn’t have the time.”
