Norman Foster & Associates
The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HKSB) is a vertical banking city of eight villages suspended below doubleheight lobby spaces. The lowest of the lobbies is an open pedestrian mall at grade level that maintains an urban parkway leading from ferry landings to cultural centers. Inside the building a small number of express elevators run between the double-height lobby floors, with escalators providing quick and open circulation within each vertical village.
Custom prefabrication typifies the HKSB technical systems. The large scale of this project allowed for every component to be custom designed and fabricated. Construction on the small site proceeded as components were delivered and plugged directly in place. Modular mechanical rooms, permanent service cranes, exoskeletal structure, and sophisticated floor-ceiling service layers carry the High Tech banner of industrial precision, expressionism, and flexible servicing.
Figure 10.25 Overview of Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. (Photograph by Meredith L.
Clausen ©1996, as selected from the Cities & Buildings Database at the University of Washington. Visit the digital image collection at http://content. lib. washington. edu/cities.)
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TABLE 10.8 Fact Sheet |
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Project |
Building Name Client City Lat/Long/Elev |
Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) Hong Kong 22.30°N 114.20°E, height about 33m/108 ft above sea level |
|
Team |
Architect Structural Services Quantity Surveyors Project Coordinator Management Contractor Value Analysis Sunscoop |
Norman Foster & Associates Ove Arup & Partners J Roger Preston & Partners Levett & Bailey in association with Northcroft, Neighbor & Nicholson R. J. Mead & Company John Lok / Wimpey joint venture Quickborner Team Lighting Sciences of Arizona |
|
General |
Time Line Floor Area Occupants Cost Cost in 1995 US$ Stories Plan |
Competition: June to October 1979; design concept May 1980; construction November 1981 to November 1985. Erection of steel superstructure actually began January 3,1983, and practical completion was handed to the client 2 years and 11 months later. 43 floor levels above a pedestrian plaza, four basement levels; gross 1,067,476 ft2 (99,171 m2); usable 757,757 ft2 (70,398 m2). Staff of 5000 with about 7000 customer visits per day. 5227 million Hongkong dollars, or about US$670 million in 1985. Some 65% of the budget was committed to steel structure, cladding, elevators, and escalators by January 1982. $949.2 million, about $890/ft2. 43 above a pedestrian plaza, reaching to 586 ft (178.8 m); 4 basement levels to 61.7 ft (18.8 m) below grade. Plaza is 37,826 ft2 (3512 m2). Largest floor is 34,607 ft2 (3215 m2). Footprint is about 177 ft x 230 ft (54 m x 70 m) overall. |
|
Site |
Site Description Parking, Cars |
Central Hong Kong along Des Voeus Road Central, looking about 16 degrees east of north over the seafront. The plot is about 223 ft (68 m) north to south and 246 ft (75 m) east to west, with a small slice taken off the southeast corner on the Queen’s Road side. Small number of parking spaces in basement. |
|
Structure |
Foundation Vertical Members Horizontal Spans Special Features |
Caissons to depth of 111.5 ft (34 m) below grade. 8 groups of aluminum-clad steel tube masts aligned in two rows of four. External trusses at double-height levels, from which floors below are suspended on tension hangers. 29,736 tons (27,000 tonnes) of structural steel and 1,236,013 ft3 (35,000 m3) of concrete. |
|
Envelope |
Glass and Glazing Skylights Cladding Roof Special Features |
344,444 ft2 (32,000 m2) of insulated silver reflective glass. None. Structure is clad in 1 million ft2 (93,000 m2) of aluminum. Not determined. Exterior sunscoop at Level 12:480 mirrors, total weight 35.2 tons (32 tonnes). |
|
HVAC |
Equipment Cooling Type Distribution Duct Type Vertical Chases |
3555 tons (12,5000 kW) of cooling capacity. Direct expansion with seawater heat rejection via tunnel to bay. Chilled water from basement to 139 service modules. Subfloor. Core functions at east and west walls. |
|
Interior |
Partitions Finishes Vertical Circulation Furniture Lighting Electrical Special Features |
Movable. Various. 23 express passenger elevators to double-height floors and 5 freight elevators, 62 escalators. Various. Indirect fluorescent. 11,880,000 ft (3,600 km or 2027 miles ) of electrical and communication cabling Interior sunscoop reflector at top of 170 ft high atrium (above plaza) |
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Sub floor ducts. |
Basement foundations on caissons to depth of 111.5-ft (34-m) below grade.
Program
The Hong Kong Bank was one of the first British banks to open an overseas operation in the Far East. It was founded by local merchants in 1865 to finance their trade with China, Japan, and the Philippines. By 1900 it had branches in London, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai, Bangkok, Singapore, and dozens of other major commercial centers. In 1886 its first headquarters was constructed on the present site in Hong Kong by the architectural firm of Palmer & Turner. The same firm completed the bank’s Shanghai branch office in 1923, a building that now houses the Shanghai municipal government and headquarters of the local Communist Party.
During the depression of the 1930s, the bank purchased Hong Kong’s city hall next to its own building and set out to build a grand banking center. Completed in 1935, the new building covered an acre of ground and included several innovative materials, all of them imported. The only local material was a native granite cladding. Made of high-tensile Chromador steel, fully air-conditioned, glazed with plate glass capable of withstanding 130 mph typhoon winds, and completed in less than two years, the new building attracted worldwide attention. A pair of guardian lions at the main entrance would soon become a symbol of the bank’s success. Today they stand at the front of the new headquarters; their paws polished smooth by generations of passersby hoping that prosperity will rub off.
By 1978 the bank had outgrown its facilities and spread its offices across central Hong Kong. Office space was in high demand, and further growth of the bank suggested that by 1985 another 50,000 ft2 would be needed just to keep pace. Consolidation was in order.
At this time in its history, Hong Kong was a city-state of about 5.5 million people living in its most dense areas at the incredibly crowded conditions of about 74,000 people per square mile (28,500 per square kilometer). Migration from Mainland China had strained the province’s resources since the end of World War II, when the Hong Kong population numbered only 600,000. Nonetheless, Hong Kong had become the fourth largest financial center in the world, after New York, London, and Tokyo. The central business district lies on Hong Kong Island, overlooking one of the world’s largest deep-water container ports. From the island’s summit on Victoria Peak (1,810 ft or 552 m), the wealthy elite of Hong Kong look down on a vertical city of towers that began popping up only in the 1960s.
The 1970s were prosperous in Hong Kong, reflecting the general affluence and optimism of global economics. The bank’s existing site at 1 Queen’s Road Central was one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world, and the small building that stood there neither served the bank’s needs nor took advantage of the location. The bank thus began in January 1979 to set up a feasibility study and choose an architect to redevelop its facilities. Following an internal selection process, on June 14, 1979, the following firms were invited to participate in a three-month exercise, after which one firm would be chosen:
• Palmer & Turner — the bank’s own homegrown architects
• Skidmore, Owings & Merrill—corporate architects extraordinaire
• Hugh Stubbins — recently completed Citicorp Center in New York
• Harry Seidler—renowned Australian
• Gollins, Melvin & Ward—designers of Commercial Union high-rise in London
• Minoru Yamasaki—Seattle-based architect of the World Trade Center in New York
• Norman Foster — 44-year-old British architect known for his innovative solutions, but who had never built anything over four stories tall
The contestants were provided with little information about the bank’s needs and only one day of briefing on the whole project. From their previous months of investigation, the bank set out only the broadest criteria. First, the bank would continue operations on the site throughout the redevelopment process. This meant that it wished for one of two basic schemes to be employed. Either the north tower of the existing bank would be permanently retained and married to a new south tower erected beside it, or the entire site would be redeveloped in stages while the bank’s staff worked in the existing south tower temporarily.
Other general guidelines included minimally designated space allocations. A basement level would be provided for vaults and safety deposit boxes, public space for exhibitions and general use, loading and unloading of gold, normal office storage and equipment, and for HVAC and electrical plant rooms. The superstructure of the building would contain a multilevel banking hall around a central atrium, executive offices, specialist banking departments, international banking, a recreation area with swimming pool (later omitted), a restaurant and kitchen, gardens and terraces, and a helipad and a viewing gallery at the top.
|
Jan. |
Feb. |
Mar. |
Apr. |
May |
June |
July |
Aug. |
Sept. |
Oct. |
Nov. |
Dec. |
Year |
||
|
Degree-Days Heating |
104 |
95 |
44 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
8 |
64 |
319 |
|
|
Temperature |
Degree-Days Cooling |
25 |
36 |
109 |
251 |
450 |
550 |
620 |
618 |
555 |
438 |
217 |
71 |
3949 |
|
Extreme High |
79 |
79 |
86 |
91 |
91 |
99 |
97 |
99 |
99 |
91 |
88 |
82 |
99 |
|
|
Normal High |
67 |
67 |
71 |
77 |
83 |
86 |
89 |
89 |
87 |
83 |
76 |
70 |
78 |
|
|
Normal Average |
63 |
63 |
67 |
73 |
79 |
83 |
85 |
85 |
83 |
79 |
72 |
65 |
74 |
|
|
Normal Low |
58 |
59 |
63 |
69 |
75 |
79 |
81 |
81 |
79 |
75 |
67 |
60 |
70 |
|
|
Extreme Low |
43 |
41 |
41 |
54 |
63 |
72 |
70 |
73 |
68 |
57 |
36 |
37 |
36 |
|
|
Dew Point |
51 |
54 |
60 |
66 |
72 |
75 |
76 |
76 |
73 |
66 |
58 |
51 |
65 |
|
|
Humidity |
Max % RH |
71 |
78 |
81 |
83 |
83 |
82 |
80 |
81 |
78 |
73 |
69 |
68 |
77 |
|
Min % RH |
62 |
70 |
73 |
75 |
76 |
76 |
73 |
74 |
71 |
66 |
61 |
59 |
70 |
|
|
% Days with Rain |
13 |
17 |
23 |
26 |
43 |
60 |
56 |
50 |
40 |
20 |
7 |
10 |
30 |
|
|
Rain Inches |
1 |
2 |
3 |
6 |
11 |
16 |
14 |
15 |
12 |
5 |
2 |
1 |
86 |
|
|
Sky |
% Overcast Days |
58 |
73 |
76 |
78 |
74 |
75 |
65 |
66 |
63 |
56 |
53 |
49 |
65 |
|
% Clear Days |
45 |
30 |
26 |
29 |
38 |
40 |
56 |
52 |
49 |
54 |
55 |
54 |
44 |
|
|
Wind |
Prevailing Direction |
E |
E |
E |
E |
E |
E |
WSW |
E |
E |
E |
E |
E |
E |
|
Speed, Knots |
10 |
11 |
11 |
11 |
10 |
11 |
7 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
9 |
9 |
10 |
|
|
Percent Calm |
2 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
32 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
|
|
Rain |
4 |
5 |
7 |
8 |
13 |
18 |
17 |
15 |
12 |
6 |
2 |
3 |
110 |
|
|
Days Observed |
Fog |
5 |
9 |
13 |
13 |
4 |
1 |
# |
1 |
# |
# |
# |
4 |
50 |
|
Haze |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
|
Snow |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
|
Hail |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
|
Freezing Rain |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
|
Blowing Sand |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
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table 10.9 Normal Climate Data for Hong Kong |
In more general terms, the bank stressed a need for maximum flexibility for operational changes and technology uptake. Its requirements, and the realities of the project, dictated rapid construction on an extremely restricted site. The bank also emphasized a series of issues related to context, mainly sensitivity to ways of doing business in Hong Kong and respect for its special character. Finally, rather than specify any sort of budget constraints, the client merely established a high standard of quality and architectural merit. Its final instructions were simple and direct: This was to be the best bank building in the world.
Another series of issues surrounded the tradition of the bank itself. The institution and its existing facility had become something of an icon in Hong Kong, a symbol of its continued success and a cultural good luck charm. Great faith was vested in its maintained status and position. Because the redevelopment might disrupt such continuity, it was important to observe traditional restraint and local customs. One of these was the practice of feng shui, the art of arrangement in response to concerns for health and prosperity. Although such practices seldom had a direct bearing on the work of the design team, they are emblematic of the sort of sensitivities the bank was looking for.
The actual development of a refined brief was never agreed on by the bank, though Foster’s office worked on one from the inception of the competition. For Foster, the design had to grow from a good definition of the problem, from an understanding of the bank’s operations and growth. As late as January 1981, eight months into design development, the architect’s brief was not completely satisfactory to the bank. Demolition was already fast
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MAR APR MAY JUN JLY AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC [■HEATING DCOOLING | |
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JAN FEB |
Figure 10.28 Climate analysis graphics.
approaching and the bank’s various departments were being scattered across the city, making it increasingly difficult to collect good information. Further, the client was making ever more changes in its requirements and increasing pressures to complete the bank within a shorter and shorter timeframe with more and more program footage. As late as July 1983, HSBC decided to occupy the entire building rather than only 80 percent of it. Eventually, space requirements grew to twice what was proposed in Foster’s competition scheme.
Number 1 Queen’s Road Central lies at the northern base of Victoria Peak and at the southern end of an open pedestrian mall leading up from the Star Ferry landing. The mall originally terminated on the northeast side of the bank at Statue Square, one of the only open civic spaces in central Hong Kong. The site slopes 6.6 ft (2 m) from south to north. To the south of the bank site is a series of low – rise government buildings, St John’s Cathedral, and Battery Path, leading pedestrians uphill to Hong Kong Park. Competitor institutions, namely Standard and Charter Bank to the northwest and Bank of China to the east, made up the surrounding blocks. The pedestrian and infrastructure features were likely more significant to design influences than were the flanking buildings. Hong Kong economics dictated that the low scale of these buildings would make them candidates for redevelopment as well within a few years. I. M. Pei’s design for the Bank of China Tower, for example, was located a little farther to the east not long after. Along Statue Square, however, there were some significant colonial era buildings: the Supreme Court (1904) and the Hong Kong Club (1897) to the east and the newer Princess Building (1963) to the west.
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Kowloon, Hong Kong Dry-Bulb Temperature, °F Figure 10.29 Bin data distribution for Hong Kong. Concentric areas of graph indicate the number of hours per year that weather conditions normally occur in this climate. Similar to elevation readings on topographic maps, highest frequency occurrences of weather are at the center peaks of the graph. (Data sources: Engineering Weather Data, typical meteorological year (TMY) data from the National Climatic Data Center, and the ASHRAE Weather Data Viewer from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.) |
Views from the site are spectacular. Just 1300 ft (400 m) to the north and northeast is Victoria Harbor; to the west-southwest are the 1800 ft (550 m) prominence of Victoria Peak and the ritzy residential neighborhoods that scale its height according to levels of personal wealth.
Hong Kong is a tropical hot-humid climate with almost 4000 degree-days cooling and just over 300 degree-days heating. Seasonally, there is a monsoon rhythm, with hot – humid rainy summers and drier and cooler conditions during the rest of the year. The average daily high in July is 89°F with a low of 81°F and humidity ranges narrowly from 70 to 81 percent. Even in January, the normal temperature range is 58°F to 67°F, with relative humidity between 62 and 71 percent. Freezes occur only at higher elevations. Environmentally, the problem is straightforward—cooling loads and moisture problems dominate Hong Kong design solutions. Shading and other heat-pre – vention strategies are essential to mitigating such problems, but year-round air-conditioning is a given in buildings with any sort of internal loads. Proper daylight – ing strategies and efficient artificial illumination are the best measures toward reducing internal heat gain.
Solar geometry at this low latitude is characterized by high sun and seasonally uniform length of day. Solar noon profile angles on a south window vary from 44.3 in December to directly overhead in June. At the summer solstice, the noonday sun actually grazes the north sides of buildings. At the summer solstice the length of day is 13.4 hours from sunrise to sunset, and the winter solstice day is
10.7 hours long. Although daylighting is extremely valuable in reducing the use of artificial lighting in tropical climates, it must be carefully balanced with solar shading strategies. Solar heat gain is never useful in Hong Kong.
The tall buildings of Hong Kong are also subjected to typhoons, or tropical cyclones, on the average about three times per year. These events bring dangerously high winds and torrential rains. The most destructive forces, however, lie in the narrow center of the cyclone’s extremely low air pressure.
Intention
The client, wishing to assure itself of a quality result, stipulated that the competition winner would work with its own selection of consultants. Accordingly, the bank appointed Ove Arup & Partners as structural engineers. Levett & Bailey, a local and successful quantity surveying firm, was selected to serve that role, and another Hong Kong enterprise, J. Roger Preston & Partners, was named as services engineer. The bank also turned to Palmer & Turner, who had continued as architects for the bank’s interim needs, to provide in-house local expertise and help with the initial feasibility study for a new design.
This is the fourth case study in this text covering the work of Norman Foster and one of many buildings discussed that have High Tech underpinnings. To avoid redundancy in this case study, the discussion of architectural philosophy and intention is imbedded in the following expanded sections on critical technical issues.
Critical Technical Issues
Modern banking institutions are powerful agencies of a free-enterprise culture—they handle the money. Along with its churches, city hall, and museum buildings, banks are icons of a city’s financial and cultural wealth. As agencies of financial trust, bank buildings have always fostered images of solidarity and monumental permanence. In the introduction to Money Matters: A Critical Look at Bank Architecture, Brenda Gil (1990) calls this image “an impregnable fiscal integrity.”
The first sort of packaging given to this impregnable image relied on classic motifs of monumentality and formal authority. Greek, Roman, Renaissance, and Beaux – Arts banks are still abundant. Later however, classicism was replaced with Modernist models of transparency that were intended to convey honesty through openness and inspire confidence through progressive attitudes about efficiency and technology.
Within their public exteriors, banks are organized around their intrinsic pragmatic issues; security being the most omnipresent background factor and customer interface the most obvious foreground issue. Departmentalization is also important, as banks work with every aspect of finance from personal banking to corporate accounts to international transactions, with architecturally important aspects like mortgage lending and construction finance mixed in. Add to that the internal departments of banking management and the role of a bank as a trading exchange for its own profit. No wonder banks have so many vice presidents.
The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank was originally organized to finance regional trade. It later grew become one of two money-issuing banks on the island and even had the image of its previous building printed on the hundred dollar note. The optimism that led to its expansion was generated by the waves of banking deregulation and economic boom of the 1980s.
Strict height and plot ratio limitations were imposed by local building ordinances for all new construction. More restraints on size and shape were dictated by shadow line regulations, similar to the Right to Light laws that governed the envelope at Lloyd’s of London. Building very high or extending broadly across the site held little promise for maximizing the HSBC redevelopment. Building down was also a problem; excavation in the Hong Kong area is difficult because of the poor soil composition of decomposed granite. This problem is exaggerated on the HSBC site by the liability of damage to nearby buildings and below-grade metro lines immediately adjacent to the site.
The high cost of land, however, provides a strong stimulus for maximizing the use of the site. In 1980 estimates placed the value of the one acre bank site at a staggering US $288 million, which is about HK $2250 million or $532 million in 1995 US$. The final cost of the new facility, including the entire fitting out required for a world-class bank, was about US $670 million (HK $5227 million or $1.2 billion in 1995 US$). It would be a very poor investment to place an undersized building on such a premium site. The challenge was to determine how much could be built and where the resources would go.
Furthermore, the bank’s intention of operating on the site during construction posed several difficulties with the control of dust, noise, and vibration. The unwillingness of authorities to move the new underground metro line more than a meter from the HSBC basement wall added a long-term vibration problem. To some extent, the continuation of business operations on the site during construction was helpful—it convinced the neighboring buildings that disturbances would be kept to a minimum.
Once the building was under construction, Foster and his team would have to rely, to a large degree, on prefabricated materials from outside Hong Kong. Local craftsmanship was inadequate for the job at hand, and appropriate materials were not to be found in the tiny island state. Furthermore, the client’s demand for rapid and clean construction dictated a kit-of-parts approach. Prefabrication, in turn, posed new problems. How would the different components fit together? What if they would not fit on-site? Where would pieces be stored on the cramped site? How would shipping and weather and packaging affect the design of building components and their costs? Clearly, the kit-of-parts strategy would shift a great burden onto the architect. There would be no adjustment on-site, no wet construction to bridge gaps and fill holes. If Foster was going to design everything, he would have to be responsible for everything. All problems would have to be anticipated in design development. There would be no opportunity for change later.
The challenges of prefabrication were compounded by the short project time line. When Foster presented his final schematic design to the bank in January 1981, he promised to deliver the completed building in November 1986. In the interim, the bank would continue operations in its existing building, huddled beneath a construction project suspended bridge-like 40 stories over their heads. The bank would then gradually take occupancy of the new building as successive blocks of floors were completed. How would the security, air-conditioning, building controls, and other systems be coordinated to operate in partial capacity? How would the code officials approve occupancy of an unfinished building? Most important, because construction of the framework would commence before the design of interior spaces was completed, or even the programming of their actual use was decided, how would the design of finished portions of the project affect later design decisions? Again, responsibility was diverted from the construction phase to increase the burden on design activity. All decisions had to be made in advance for this design-build scheme to work, even in the face of incomplete knowledge.
Another structural challenge was a factor of climate, namely, the typhoons and high winds that sweep across Hong Kong an average of three times a year. In addition to available records of local storm events, Arup & Partners needed a detailed topographical description of the island to arrive at a specific solution for wind loading at the bank site. In cooperation with the project’s American cladding contractor, a wind engineering study of Hong Kong was undertaken at the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. The study, based on a tennis-court-sized 1:2500 model of the entire island of Hong Kong and adjoining Kowloon, took nearly two years to complete. Other pressure-instrumented model studies were done at 1:500 to investigate the immediate site within a 2000 ft (600 m) radius. In the end, Hong Kong building codes were proven to be adequate for the design of the building, and much was learned about the dynamic loads on its structural steel frame.
Foster persuaded the bank to commission him, based in part on his scheme to redevelop the entire site quickly while business operations continued on the same site. The strategic design for the project was just as important as the architectural merit of the finished product. Any of the competitors for the project could have satisfied programmatic and aesthetic requirements; Foster was awarded the commission because his strategic design was superior even to the bank’s own feasibility study. His reputation for delivering innovative projects on time proved to be a critical factor in his selection. Basically, Foster proposed to span over the existing banking hall and build above it until new quarters were ready. At that point, bank operations would move into the new building, the old one would be demolished, and four basement levels would be constructed beneath the old foundations. He further convinced the bank that this scheme allowed continuous operations at the same location without the shortcomings of their own feasibility studies, which he identified for them. Foster believed that saving part of a building, as proposed by the bank’s first scheme, would never do justice to either the old or the new phase. On the other hand, he reminded the client that a phased redevelopment of the entire site, per the bank’s second scheme, would require moving its operations around three times and would end up costing more in time and productivity than it was worth. He called his own scheme for moving into the new building in stages “phased regeneration.”
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TABLE 10.10 Cost Data for HKSB
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There was no initial budget for the project, but when Foster presented his first design for a suspended structure hung from a chevron style frame between two rows of concrete towers, the cost was estimated at over HK $2 billion. The conversion rate at that time was about HK $7.8 to US $1. This cost was about seven times the cost of an
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Specialties Site 2% 1% Figure 10.30 Cost data graphic by system. |
average speculative 40-story building in the same market and more than three times that of the most expensive building standing in Hong Kong. Following a board meeting of November 23, 1980, the bank imposed a budget of HK $1.3 billion for the building shell. Foster and his group retained the German planning and management consultant firm, Quickborner Team, to do a cost-in-use study to determine the comparative value of Foster’s scheme to the conventional one the bank was using for comparison. In late December 1980, Foster used the Quickborner report to convince the bank that his scheme delivered fair value when its expandability, flexibility, and efficiency were accounted for. Despite the obvious fact that it could not be built for less than HK $2 billion, the bank was reluctant to give up on the scheme its architect had laid out. Coupled with a rise in real estate values that added value to the entire project, the client reasoned that some cost savings could be achieved and the project brought into line with a realistic sum. Foster set out to refine his ideas, but the chevron scheme was rejected.