Business Island
Exceptional and unique socio-political situation in Hong Kong in the second half of the twentieth century was largely determined by the character of the architecture of this in the recent past city-state.
Hong Kong possesses significant financial strength, but a very limited area. This as a matter-of-course led to the most logical extension of its urban development - a growth upward. At the same time the construction of high-rises appropriately corresponded to ideas of business independence and financial power of the city, till 1997 being under the British protectorate. Sharp contrast with Chinese environment dramatically emphasized the exclusivity of Hong Kong as a major financial center of the region. Therefore, the construction of skyscrapers in this city was a natural phenomenon for decades.
High-rise skyline of the city has developed one of the first in this part of the world. It is not surprising that after the reunification with China in the late ХХ century, the spatial development of the city continued in a predetermined way. In Hong Kong, already were accommodated the headquarters of many wealthy corporations and supranational financial institutions who wanted visible proofs of their power and influence. For China the development of this major financial center in the close vicinity also was beneficial to look active and some kind involved in the progressive world economic processes.
Today in Hong Kong the abundance of high-rise buildings seems a norm. After all, in the city more than one hundred structures of almost two hundred-meter height, five – is higher than 300 m, two more – it is higher than 400 m. Chicago and Dubai can boast of comparable high-rise achievements only. Meanwhile, there were times when here acted rules restricting construction of extremely tall objects because of the proximity to the airport of Hong Kong.
The highest skyscraper of the city for already two years is the International Commerce Centre (484 m), constructed in 2010 in the area of West Kowloon. The tower was designed by the American architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) in association with Wong & Ouyang (HK) Ltd. A five-star hotel, The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong occupies floors 102 to 118. The world’s highest swimming pool and bar (OZONE) can be found on the top 118th floor. The development is owned and jointly developed by MTR Corporation Limited and Sun Hung Kai Properties, Hong Kong’s metro operator and largest property developer respectively. It is currently the world’s fifth tallest building by height, world’s third tallest building by floors, as well as the tallest building in Hong Kong. But how long it would stay in that status it is just on the knees of the gods.
The second-tallest building in Hong Kong is the 88-story Two International Finance Centre, rising at 416 metres (1364 feet) which stands as the 5th tallest all-office building in the world as well as the 5th tallest building in the People’s Republic of China. The third tallest building of the city, 78-story Central Plaza which had been the tallest building in Hong Kong for more than 10 years - from 1992 to 2003. It contains Sky City Church, the highest church in the world located inside a skyscraper. Central Plaza was also the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world, until it was surpassed by CITIC Plaza, Guangzhou. The fourthtallest building in the city is the 70-story Bank of China Tower, rising 367 m (1,204 ft) high and designed by famed architect I. M. Pei. The Bank of China Tower is the first skyscraper outside the United States to stand taller than 305 m (1,000 ft) in height.
The history of skyscrapers in Hong Kong began in 1935 with the completion of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank building, which is regarded as the first high-rise in the city. The building stood 70 m (230 ft) tall with 13 floors and existed for six decades before being demolished for the construction of the HSBC Main Building. High-rise construction was limited in the early part of the 20th century, but beginning in the 1970s, Hong Kong experienced widespread building construction that has continued to the present; this boom is in large part a result of the city’s rugged, mountainous terrain and lack of flat land. The city entered into a building boom from 1980 to 1993, during which 22 of the city’s 112 tallest buildings were constructed, including the Hopewell Centre, Bank of China Tower, and Central Plaza.
Beginning in 1998, Hong Kong entered into a second, much larger building boom that has continued to the present. In a ten-year span between 2000 and 2010, more than 85 buildings taller than 180 m (591 ft) were completed, including several of the tallest skyscrapers in the city such as International Commerce Centre, Two International Finance Centre, Nina Tower I, and One Island East.
Unlike the previous building trend of the 1980s and early 1990s, most of the buildings completed in the beginning of the 21st century is for residential purposes, due to a surge in demand for luxury housing properties in Hong Kong. Also, the city saw many skyscrapers rise out of Kowloon, notably the Sorrento, the Langham Place Office Tower, and the Cullinan Towers, all of which exceed 200 metres (656 ft) in height. This was due to the closure of the Kai Tak Airport located to the northeast, which lifted height restrictions across Kowloon, allowing taller buildings to be built. In addition, Hong Kong’s skyline is often considered to be one of the best in the world, with the surrounding mountains and Victoria Harbour complementing the skyscrapers. Every night, many skyscrapers and buildings on both sides of Victoria Harbour light up in a synchronized show called A Symphony of Lights, named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest permanent light and sound festival in the world, especially attractive for tourists.
Despite the overall advisability of high rise construction in the city, at different timepoints there were certain restrictions on its guiding. Today, high-rise buildings are widely spreaded across the city area, because, as we’ve already mentioned above, after closing the Kai Tak airport there are fewer constraints. The high-rise that have been constructed in Hong Kong are spread throughout the special administrative region, but most are concentrated in an area stretching from Tsuen Wan in the west across the Kowloon Peninsula to Yau Tong in the east and on the north shore of Hong Kong Island. New towns like Tseung Kwan O, Sha Tin, Tai Po, Fanling, Yuen Long and Tuen Mun in the rural-suburban New Territories region also contain large clusters of high-rises. Several communities on the south shore of Hong Kong Island, including Pok Fu Lam, Aberdeen and Repulse Bay, contain significant numbers of high-rises.
Hong Kong ranks first in the world in both skyscraper and high-rise count, with at least 52 completed skyscrapers over the height of 200 m (656 ft), 272 skyscrapers over 150 m (492 ft), as well as more than 7,687 high-rise buildings. Even if not all started skyscrapers will be completed, it will be very difficult to compete to Hong Kong by the number of high-rises in city line.
The Central Plaza building is located at 18 Harbour Road, in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island. It was the tallest building in Asia from 1992 to 1996, until the Shun Hing Square in Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China, was built. The 78-storey building was completed in August 1995. The building surpassed the Bank of China Tower as the tallest building in Hong Kong until the completion of 2IFC. The Central Plaza celebrates a postmodernist esthetics, with all relying “curtseys” towards traditional vertical structure of the high-rise building, with hierarchy of facades and presence of natural materials for finishing. The project was implemented by Dennis Lau & Ng Chun Man Architects & Engineers (HK) Ltd., which designed several already built skyscrapers in Hong Kong and China. The mast has a height of 102 m (335 ft).
The building was designed in triangular shape because it could provide 20% more of the office area to enjoy the harbour view as compared with the square or rectangular shaped buildings. From an architectural point of view, this arrangement could provide better floor area utilisation, offering an internal column-free office area with a clear depth of 9 to 13.4 metres and an overall usable floor area efficiency of 81%. Nonetheless, the triangular building plan causes the air handling unit (AHU) room in the internal core also to assume a triangular configuration with only limited space. This makes the adoption of a standard AHU not feasible. Furthermore, all air-conditioning ducting, electrical trunking and piping gathered inside the core area had to be squeezed into a very narrow and congested corridor ceiling void.
Steel structure is more commonly adopted in high-rise building. In the original scheme, an externally cross-braced framed tube was applied with primary/secondary beams carrying metal decking with reinforced concrete slab. The core was also of steelwork, designed to carry vertical load only. In the final scheme, columns at 4.6 m (15.1 ft) centres and 1.1 m (3.6 ft) deep floor edge beams were used to replace the large steel corner columns. As climbing form and table form construction method and efficient construction management are used in this project which makes this reinforced concrete structure take no longer construction time than the steel structure. And the most attractive point is that the reinforced concrete scheme can save HK$230 million compared to that of steel structure. Hence the reinforced concrete structure was adopted and Central Plaza is now one of the tallest reinforced concrete buildings in the world. In the reinforced concrete structure scheme, the core has a similar arrangement to the steel scheme and the wind shear is taken out from the core at the lowest basement level and transferred to the perimeter diaphragm walls. In order to reduce large shear reversals in the core walls in the basement, and at the top of the tower base level, the ground floor, basement levels 1 and 2 and the 5th and 6th floors, the floor slabs and beams are separated horizontally from the core walls.
Another advantage of using reinforced concrete structure is that it is more flexible to cope with changes in structural layout, sizes and height according to the site conditions by using table form system. The site is a newly reclaimed area with a maximum water table rises to about 2 metres (6.5 ft) below ground level. In the original brief, a 6 storey basement is required; therefore a diaphragm wall design came out.
Wind loading is another major design criterion in Hong Kong as it is situated in an area influenced by typhoons. Not only must the structure be able to resist the loads generally and the cladding system and its fixings resist higher local loads, but the building must also perform dynamically in an acceptable manner such that predicted movements lie within acceptable standards of occupant comfort criteria. To ensure that all aspects of the building’s performance in strong winds will be acceptable, a detailed wind tunnel study was carried out by Professor Alan Davenport at the BLWT at the UWO.
On the top of the tower is a four-bar neon clock that indicates the time by displaying different colours in 15 minute intervals, blinking at the change of the quarter.
An anemometer is installed on the tip of the building’s mast; the anemometer sits at 378 m (1,240 ft) above sea level. The building is surrounded by a beautiful park with fountains, gazebos and other hard landscaping.
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text by MARIANNA MAEVSKAYA