 HONG KONG: Hong Kong, says the Pritzker Prize winner Zaha Hadid, is where "it all started." In 1983, the London architect's revolutionary design won the international competition for The Peak Club, a residential and sports facility in the former British territory's tony mountainside district. The project was never built, but the award was one of the first public acknowledgements of her work and a key early boost to her career.
These days, mainland China, host to the 2008 Olympics, has no shortage of impressive new structures by the biggest names in architecture, so it is no surprise that Hong Kong, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, feels the need to embrace innovative real estate ideas. But the reasons for enlisting design stars highlight the cultural and economic differences that remain between the two places.
On the mainland, the government-bankrolled sports centers and cultural venues that excite architecture enthusiasts are intended to underscore the country's rise as an economic and political force to be reckoned with internationally. Hong Kong has a far more pragmatic attitude: Design, it seems, is an investment that serves economics and, increasingly, commerce.
"Hong Kong people love brand names, you know," said Ada Yeung Yi-ching, senior sales manager for Midland Realty, one of the territory's largest property brokerage companies. "They are always chasing brand names in handbags and clothes, so now they are looking for brand names in property. It is the start of a new trend in Hong Kong."
There are several residential and commercial developments are in the works with this trend in mind and several more are expected to be announced in coming months.
Twenty-five years after that Peak Club competition, Hadid is finally preparing to break ground on her first Hong Kong building. When Innovation Tower opens in 2011, the 12,000 square meters, or 130,000 square feet, of space will house the school of design for Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the largest tertiary education institution in the city. Victor Lo Chung-wing, chairman of the PolyU Council, has declared that Innovation Tower will be "a driving force in the development of Hong Kong as a design hub in Asia."
Hadid describes the sculptural, angled design of the tower, which is estimated to cost more than 400 million Hong Kong dollars, or $51 million, as bringing together concepts of "strata, landscape, layering." The architect, who attended the project's early December launch event in Hong Kong, said in an interview that "to bring urban life into the building is rather nice for a school."
More than just a high-rise of classrooms, it will include studios, public exhibition spaces and a café. Despite the tower's decidedly uncommercial primary purpose, there is already plenty of excited local chatter on how the building not only could burnish the university's reputation but also might help to reposition the mostly industrial Hunghom neighborhood and improve property values.
Hong Kong already boasts several structures by renowned architects. Among them, I.M. Pei's Bank of China building and Norman Foster's HSBC headquarters came to define the cityscape of the Central business district in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Foster completed the Hong Kong international airport at Chek Lap Kok. But not until recently have designers become such a strong and effective commercial marketing tool.
The magic of the "brand-name architect" was most apparent with the seaside Bel-Air No. 8 residences in Pokfulam. Pacific Century Premium Developments, the real estate company behind it, heavily advertised the Foster connection in selling the eight apartment blocks. Huge billboards, with only small Bel-Air No. 8 signage, depicted other Foster designs, including the Great Court at the British Museum and "The Gherkin," the nickname of Swiss Re's London headquarters.
Foster's Bel-Air features a distinctive undulating steel and glass facade, something very different from the typical tiled exteriors of Hong Kong flats.
"Because of the brand name - Norman Foster - a lot of international investors have bought Bel-Air No. 8," Yeung said, estimating that Foster's reputation alone added 30 percent to the apartment prices.
And while rents in the neighborhood are around 40 dollars per square foot, the Foster blocks will likely command 55 dollars per square foot by the time they are ready for occupancy in the fall of 2008, she said.
Yeung also estimated that an unusually high 40 percent of the buyers were expatriates, prompted, at least in part, by the cachet of Foster's name. For example, the entire 102-unit Tower 6 was purchased by a Korean asset management company for 1.86 billion dollars.
A block of serviced apartments at the grubbier end of the Central neighborhood is another prime case of leveraging an international designer's name - this time Andrée Putman, the Frenchwoman responsible for the interiors of the Concorde and Morgans hotels in New York.
"Andrée Putman oversaw site design, development, space use, exterior elevation and interior decoration," said Loewe Lee Bon-chi, managing director of the developer, National Properties Holdings. "Our strong rental rates and occupancy suggest that there is a definite demand for our type of product in the market today." The building, called The Putman, is fully occupied and has a waiting list, even though average leases are 50,000 dollars to 72,000 dollars a month for a 120-square-meter unit, at least double the neighborhood's norm.
None of the developers would comment on whether the designs of famous architects produce higher construction costs than those of local architects, but one property analyst, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid offending any of the developers he works with, said: "Hong Kong real estate companies are very focused on profits. They will only spend more on a star architect - and it always costs more - if there is money to be made and now it seems there is."
Differences in attitudes seems to be something that big names do not worry about.
"I can't tell the mentality or psychology of a city. But Hong Kong is really very different from Beijing," Hadid said.
Her futuristic design for a mixed-use development in China's capital remains unbuilt, although just across the border from Hong Kong, she is constructing an opera house for Guangzhou that is due to be finished in 2010, when the city is to be host to the Asian Games.
Despite her early association with Hong Kong, until the PolyU tower, Hadid said: "We haven't had many inquiries from Hong Kong before. I think it's because it's high-rises here and people think we don't do them, but that's not true."
Source: http://www.iht.com/ |
