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t h i s p a g ed o e s n o t
p r i n t
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Cheung Kong Center
Hong Kong SAR, People’s Republic of China
Urban Context
The 62-story Cheung Kong Center is located on a corner site in the prestigious Central
District (Central) on the north shore of Hong Kong. Situated at the intersection of
Garden Road and Queen’s Road Central, one of the city’s major commercial streets, the
2.38-acre (0.96 ha) property was once the site of a Hilton Hotel, a public parking garage,
and Beaconsfield House, a 1960s government office building.
The site overlooks Chater Garden to the northeast, one of Central’s most popular pub-
lic parks, and is surrounded by buildings of varying age, scale, and architectural character.
St. John’s Cathedral (1849), the oldest Anglican church in southeast Asia and one of the
city’s most historic edifices, lies to the immediate southwest and is adjacent to the three-
story former French Mission (1917), a neo-classical brick building currently the Hong
Kong Court of Final Appeal. Across Queen’s Road Central to the northwest is the Art
Deco former headquarters of the Bank of China and its neighbor to the immediate east,
the 590-ft.-tall (180-m) headquarters of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank (1985) by
Norman Foster. To the east across Garden Road is I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Building
(1990), the tallest building in Asia until 1992 at a height of 1209 ft. (369 m). The two
linked high-rise glass towers of Citibank Plaza (1992) are directly south of the site along
Garden Road.
Des ign Cha l lenges
The client, Cheung Kong Holdings, Ltd., a large property development and strategic
investment company, wished to create a landmark corporate headquarters of timeless
design that would stand out from Hong Kong’s aesthetically disparate skyline, whether
viewed from within the city or from Victoria Harbour, especially at night. The challenge
for the L A D-led design team was to create an elegant, simply profiled building
Cheung Kong Center
Hong Kong SAR, People’s Republic of China
21
form that would afford both the maximum
allowable building area and column-free floor
plates. Because the building site was at a major
urban intersection, the new headquarters also
had to provide various civic amenities at its
base. In addition, the steep slope of the site—
a 20-ft. (6.1-m) grade change from St. John’s
Cathedral down to Queen’s Road Central—
required the building’s design to include con-
nections to the surrounding pedestrian walk-
way system. In meeting these challenges, the
design also needed to follow the Chinese prac-
tice of feng shui (space creation in harmony
with the environment).
Civ ic Ameni t ies
The Cheung Kong Center’s design organizes
the steep topography of the site on three levels,
each with its own distinct character. Along
Queen’s Road Central, for example, a lower
landscaped plaza provides access from the
north to the main lower lobby entrance. Open
to the public, the plaza is furnished with
benches and features a tall granite wall whose
surface is awash with falling water to dampen
the noise of passing vehicular traffic. Beneath
the building is a sub-grade parking structure
H O N G K O N G
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with six levels that accommodates more than
1,000 vehicles for both tenants and the public.
Along the sidewalk at the edge of the car park
are a post office and public restrooms.
A cascade of broad stone stairs and a bank
of exterior escalators bring pedestrians to the
middle level, located nearly 20 ft. (6 m) above
Queen’s Road Central. The northern portion
of this level is designed as an “urban balcony”,
offering vistas along this major thoroughfare
and over Chater Garden. Feeding the water
wall below is a large pool with fountains that
produce soothing ambient sounds to counter
the clamor of the lower street traffic. A motor
court accessed from Garden Road brings vehi-
cles directly to the tower’s upper entrance and
also leads to the car park below. Paths to a sys-
tem of raised pedestrian walkways serving City
Bank Plaza, Chater Garden, and other neigh-
boring areas also occur at this mid-level.
At the third and highest level of the site is
Cheung Kong Park, created by the building
owners to be a welcoming natural environment
for the enjoyment of all. Lushly landscaped
with native plantings, a lily pond, and other
small water features, this green oasis is located
C H E U N G K O N G C E N T E R
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Queen’s
RoadCentral
Garde
nRoad
along Battery Path, the pedestrian link
between St. John’s Cathedral and the former
French Mission. Functionally integrated with
these important historic landmarks, Cheung
Kong Park is a verdant retreat from the hectic
pulse of the city and generously enhances the
pedestrian realm of Hong Kong Central.
Bui ld ing Des ign
Cheung Kong Center has become one of the
city’s preeminent and most easily recognized
structures. Its maximum height established by
the glide path between the Hong Kong &
Shanghai Bank and the Bank of China, the
center stands in powerful compositional and
aesthetic contrast to its two prominent high-
rise neighbors. Square in plan, minimalist in
exterior profile, and rising to a height of 928 ft.
(283 m), the Center is designed as an extruded
glass prism within a layered skeletal grid of
exposed stainless steel.
Principles of feng shui were employed to
determine the building’s plan shape, site orien-
tation, chamfered corners, and reflective glass
skin. Orienting the building’s square plan par-
allel to Garden Road rather than Queen’s Road
Central gave occupants of office floors on two
sides outstanding views of Victoria Harbour,
while those on the other two sides have vistas
toward the west or The Peak, the highest
mountain in Hong Kong.
The Lobby
The base of the Cheung Kong Center is
designed as a fully transparent, two-level lobby
to be entered from both the north and the
south. Glazed with high-performance Viacron
with 100 percent light transmittance, the large
enclosing walls were custom-fabricated. This
highly transparent zone rises to a height of 53 ft.
(16 m) above the lower street lobby and allows
multiple views of the landscaped tiered gardens
to the southwest as well to the surrounding
buildings and streets of the city. To limit the
imposition of multiple perimeter columns on
the lobby, all upper exterior loads are trans-
ferred to eight outer super-columns by means
of a two-story transfer truss placed at levels
four and five.
The central elevator core is clad in back-
lighted sheets of green-tinted textured glass
arranged in vertical rows alternating between
H O N G K O N G
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C H E U N G K O N G C E N T E R
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flat panels and “V-shaped” projecting bays,
producing a luminous interior that is at once
aesthetically arresting and sumptuous. Accent
strips of dichroic glass mounted over fiber
optic lighting form the outer edge of the pro-
jecting glass bays and glow with an array of
changing colors when illuminated. At the
upper lobby level, two pairs of private express
elevators, sheathed in fritted glass to expose the
cabs, become freestanding animated sculptural
elements when in use. Ceiling panels, column
covers, and window mullions in stainless steel,
along with granite and marble floors and trim
(in hues of gray and green) complement the
color and textures of the central core to create
a visual symphony of refined finish and mate-
rial elegance.
Structura l System
To achieve both speed and economy in con-
struction, structural engineers Ove Arup and
Partners Hong Kong Ltd. designed an inner
core of concrete and an outer structural frame
of concrete-filled circular steel tubes placed on
a 23-ft.-7 in. (7.2 m) grid. Flexible, column-free
floor plates averaging 18,500 sq. ft. (1,720 sq m)
in area result from core-to-window wall dis-
tances varying from 36 ft. to 49 ft. (11m to 15m);
these are spanned with steel beams carrying
composite steel-and-concrete structural deck.
At each of the tower’s four corners, floors are
cantilevered some 18 ft. (5.5 m) from inset peri-
meter columns, enabling the exterior glass skin
to follow the building’s chamfered corners
without the imposition of any corner columns.
Off ice Env i ronments
To provide state-of-the-art office environments
for all the building’s occupants, a 16-in.-high
(400-mm) raised floor system allows for the
flexible distribution of power, telecommunica-
tions, and data cabling. The raised floor also
accommodates the building’s “Totally Adaptive
Air-conditioning System” (TAAS), which gives
building occupants direct environmental con-
trol of individual office spaces. The floor sys-
tem also allows for efficient and cost-effective
modification of internal office layouts to
accommodate organizational changes.
To admit as much natural light as possible,
floor-to-ceiling office heights of 9 ft.-10 in. (3m)
are standard. At the exterior wall, the column
H O N G K O N G
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Typical floor plan: high zone
C H E U N G K O N G C E N T E R
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grid may be subdivided into two offices, each
11 ft.-10 in. wide (3.6 m) with its own openable
window, as required by law.
Curta in Wal l as Tapest ry
The L A D-led design team created
facades of interwoven grids and spatial layers
for the skin of the tower which produced a tap-
estry like effect. Cesar Pelli & Associates and
H.M. Brandston & Partners, Inc., consulted
with the design team on the creation of the
curtain wall.
The exterior column bays are subdivided
with vertical mullions spaced on 7 ft.-10 in.
(2.4 m) centers. Each bay, in turn, is horizon-
tally organized into four window components:
two operable windows, each 2 ft.-6 in. (758mm)
wide, one on either side of the columns; and
two nearly square fixed vision glass panels.
Rectangular spandrel glass panels follow the
same subdivisions.
Glazing consists of silver-coated, laminated
glass treated to achieve maximum transparency
and light transmittance, sound attenuation,
and typhoon resistance. Because both the
vision and spandrel panels have the same exte-
H O N G K O N G
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rior coating, the entire glass skin is undifferen-
tiated in the reflectivity of its surface, except on
the mechanical/refuge floors where louvers or
woven metal mesh enclosures occur.
Semicircular tubes of polished stainless steel
are paired at each exterior column face, adding
vertical emphasis to the façades and increasing
surface area to reflect light.
At the top and bottom of the spandrel glass
panels, small stainless steel cylinders are sus-
pended approximately 12 in. (305 mm) away
from the plane of the window glass and span
horizontally between projecting brackets. These
projections appear to float between the vertical
window mullions and provide added depth and
shadow to the building elevations. High-inten-
sity, adjustable uplights—mounted on brackets
extending 4 ft. (1.2 m) from the column covers
at every other floor—further embellish the
façades as projecting stainless steel elements and
provide illumination at night.
Layers in L ight
Both the profiles and layers of these stainless
steel façade components contribute significant-
ly to the tower’s tapestry-like exterior. The
exterior surfaces are all fabricated of stainless
steel with a “linen” finish because of its greater
reflectance, the first architectural use of this
finish on a high-rise in Hong Kong. Inter-
woven in an external tartan grid, the outer
surface, like the glass within it, shimmers with
changes in natural light throughout the day.
To ensure its distinctive contribution to
Hong Kong’s illuminated shoreline at night,
Cheung Kong Center further incorporates an
extensive system of fiber-optic lighting into the
building façades. More than 12,000 emitter
lenses placed at the intersections of all horizon-
tal and vertical mullions of the façades appear
as individual “stars” of light. Computer-con-
trolled and capable of changing color and light
patterns, this integrated lighting system gives
the building a shimmering appearance when
seen from a distance, as the lenses twinkle
within the floating tapestry of the curtain wall.
At the top of the tower, special studio lights
reflecting across the underside of the roof ’s
dramatically sloped soYts produce a nighttime
halo.
Urban Poise
At street level, the Cheung Kong Center seam-
lessly merges its dramatic lobby spaces with the
exterior civic amenities created around it.
Along the city’s visually vibrant skyline, it dis-
plays a quiet poise and elegance within a
relaxed exterior. In both cases, the Center
demonstrates corporate beneficence toward the
city and its citizens.
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