Posted by
kram
19 yrs ago
Anyone know of a site that has fun facts about the many impressive buildings and construction in Hong Kong?
I have browsed google and somehow all that I could manage was basic stuff like height and total office space etc.
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TC
19 yrs ago
There are several books published on HK architecture (both old and new) - available in Dymocks and probably other placed like Bookazine, Page One etc.
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HSBC: the most expensive office building ever build. the only one which is build from the top down to the bottom. It's the only building you can easily dismantle and build up somewhere else.
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The Lippo Centre is nick-named the 'Koala Building' as it looks like koala's climbing it. The building was originally built for Alan Bond and known as the 'Bond Centre' until Mr Bond's company hit hard times when it was sold.
IM Pei's BoC Tower has been criticised for its Feng Shui & apparently is known as a cleaver building in Feng Shui - it actually faces the HSBC building like this... I heard the tower was built on a site of execution during WW2 and inside design took into account this bad feng shui.
Central Plaza to me is a great building, which took over the highest building in HK from BoC Tower. Once a friend working in the building had a small drinks night with colleagues and grabbed a bottle of wine, went on the sloping roof & climbed up the antenna to sit on a small 1m square platform, had some wine & looked at the night view then went down. (Central Plaza is 370+m in height!) Also ever noticed the 'clock' on the bottom of the antenna? There are 4 light 'bars' that change every 15 mins until they all are the same colour then change one by one again & repeat.
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kram
19 yrs ago
Looks like I have give up my net addiction and walk up to the bookstore more often.
I have heard of many of these - but am quite scared of quoting some of them as they may be 'urban myths'.
And personally, the lippo building reminds me of a set of cubes - being rotated...
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TC
19 yrs ago
I thought there was only one man-made structure visible from space - the Great Wall of China???
And the 'pandas climbing a tree' bit abount the Lippo Centre is a bit suspicious. Given that it was originally the Bond Centre (and built for Alan Bond as stated somewhere above) it's much more likely to be koalas. In fact if you look at the shape they ARE koalas.
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Perhaps I've tinkered with too many engines but I always thought the Bond Centre (what it was called when I worked there) looked like a crankshaft.
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Paul Rudolph may have been the concept design guy but Wong & Ouyang did the detailed bits & lets not forget the guys who never get mentioned the structural, M&E consultants, the cladding guys, the builders etc etc.
How about the Dragon Centre? Not many shopping centres with a rollercoaster in them. Or the building in Mong Kok (no idea on its name) with a road going through it!
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kram is correct to be suspicious – there a number of inaccuracies in this thread already:
- Lippo Centre: stylized KOALAS climbing a tree, not pandas (corrected already)
- HSBC HQ: 1) building CANNOT be easily dismantled and moved; 2) not build from the top down (certainly not the structural parts/exoskeleton); 3) significant is not that the plumbing is visible, but that it is the exoskeleton on the outside of the building; 4) not the most expensive office building in the world anymore
- About man-made structures being visible to the unaided human eye from space, that really depends on how ‘space’ is defined – lots of things are visible from Earth orbit, but not from further away that (say, the moon), in particular not the Great Wall which it is only a few meters wide after all…
Additional (true) pieces of information/clarifications:
- Murray House: indeed used to be in Central (at the location currently occupied by the BOC Tower), but was not immediately rebuild; rather was dismantled, put in storage, and reconstructed a few years later (allegedly marking on some of the parts had worn off and reconstruction turned into a big jigsaw puzzle – the columns standing in front of the building purportedly were ‘left over’ because the builders could not figure out where they belonged)
- Bank of China Tower: information above correct on most points (history of location, etc.), particularly the bad feng shui toward surrounding buildings – rumor has it that the window washer cranes of the HSBC HQ resemble cannons to ward off the negative energy
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Lots of urban myths develop! The HSBC building was rumoured to be dismantlable so before 1997 handover it could be removed! But from Foster & partner's own web site:
'while the need to build downwards and upwards simultaneously led to the adoption of a suspension structure, with pairs of steel masts arranged in three bays'
Guy I knew who worked on the project stated all drainage was stainless steel but the habour water still corroded the pump blades. It was for a while the most expensive office building, in excess of US$670m (compare that to Central Plaza at around US$143 completed 7 years later)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_buildings_in_Hong_Kong
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Christian_Moore: Exactly my point. Then again, you can see major roads and even vehicles from earth orbit with nothing but a pair of binoculars or a telephoto lens.
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kram
19 yrs ago
Even I had read that the GW of China is the only manmade structure visible from space - I'm asuming without the aid of visual devices such as telescopes or binocs.
But then, I had believed that the HSBC building could be dismantled too :) I would like it that way I think !!
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As of May this year, the biggest mall of Asia is located in the Philippines--the SM Mall of Asia is the largest shopping mall in the world (in terms of gross floor size), 2nd is Golden Resources Mall in China followed by West Edmonton Mall in Canada...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_Mall_of_Asia
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TC
19 yrs ago
The '$70 book' mentioned a few feet of typing space to the north is SKYLINES. I now have my copy in front of me, and in terms of the Lippo centre it quotes 'one of the original architects' (Lam Ho Wei) as saying that "the inspiration for the cubist forms that give the towers their distinctive shape...derives...more from music than from anything graphically representational". Hah, what would he know?! I still prefer the koalas [Note: NOT koala bears!] link.
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kram
19 yrs ago
TC/Pumpkin, can you give me the name or cover illustration of the 70$ book.
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TC
19 yrs ago
And mine (which I bought at the Star Ferry branch of Dymocks about 3 years ago) is about (actually that's not right because I have my ruler out)...exactly 3.5" x 7" and the cover has a nighttime photo of Admiralty taken from (at a guess) the top of somewhere like Jardine House. It is called SKYLINES HONG KONG, the author/compiler is Peter Moss and the publisher is FormAsia.
Incidentally, the thought of Jardine House reminded me of the anecdotal moniker that it carries in some local haunts (altho' to be honest I think it could be an ex pat-sourced joke) relates to the more traditional label of 'The House of a Thousand Portholes'. Based on the view that the original Jardine & Matheson hongs made a lot of their money by somewhat dubious means, and screwing a lot of the locals along the way, the anecdotal moniker is 'The House of a Thousand A***holes'. That's not in the book!
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I was told once that the HSBC building has an underground (and submerged in harbour water) tunnel, so that should the Chinese go mad in 97 (or if HK ever got invaded again as in WW2) then the banks gold reserves could be quickly evacuated via submarine. Don't tell me THAT is an urban myth as well. Sheesh!!!
As for the exoskeleton being on the outside - where else is an exoskeleton going to be if its not on the OUTSIDE. If it was on the inside surely it would just be a skeleton?????
I also heard that the Convention and Exhibition centre was built to resemble a butterfly landing on the harbour. Possible.
And Terry Farrell has denied all rumours that the peak viewing platform was deliberately designed to look like a WOK.
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Hm, in the movie My Lucky Star Star the HKCEC is likened to a turtle and on the HKCEC website its roof is said to "capture the rhythm and delicacy of a seabird's wing", but I am not sure it was inspired but either one.
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The HSBC needs tunnels for the cooling water from the harbour but the submarine bit does sound more spectacular.
And anyone remember when the HKCEC started then stopped as they got the foundations/dredging in the wrong place?
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kram
19 yrs ago
Thanx TC and Pumpkin for the book details. Pumpkin, your book seems to be a collectors edition now :)
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suze
19 yrs ago
No you can buy the book in Bookazine in Jardine House for the princely sum of $35! My friend got one yesterday!
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