concourse
1
restaurant waving gallery
ade
bollard platform
Ty
pier
transit godown
Cross-section to double-height concourse area, looking east towards the land
its width 200 ft. The total area of the pier is 7 acres, while the area of the transit godown is some 41⁄2 acres. The car parks contain space for 1.200
cars.
Columns were cast in situ, but the beams and floor slabs were precast in another part of Kowloon and towed to the site by sea.
The building is now virtually com- plete. the outstanding work being mainly that of tenants. The finishes contractor was scheduled to have ten months to complete his work but for the part of the building which was opened first, containing the major por- tion of his work, this was reduced to not much more than five months.
The original budget for the project was HK$73 million, of which about HK$10 million was for finishes and the remainder for the structure. Al- most half the structural cost was for work below the water.
Simplicity
In appearance this building is dif- ferent from the ordinary run of of- fices and apartments, naturally, and it is not at all obvious at first sight
what it contains. The form and ap- pearance seem to have evolved almost entirely from basic engineering re- quirements, and have 1 simplicity which is pleasant to look at. Con- crete fins all along the top part, which serve to hide the car-parking, add to the character of building.
One of the important elements in the design, as can be seen in the sec- tion, is provision for conducting pas- sengers from the ships into the build- ing, which meant constructing cover- ed galleries all along the sale and pro- viding for the movable gangways which are a special feature of the terminal.
These gangways swivel and tele- scope out from the side of the build- ing to reach the ships, and are hy- draulically operated. They are cap- able of cantilevering out some 50 ft.. and since they are on rails running the length of the building and can be held at various angles, are extremely ver- satile.
A small criticism which has been levelled against the appearance of the building is that there is nothing "Hong Kong" about it. No doubt it would have been possible, especially
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with a smaller building, to design something consciously oriental, but the owners and designers have wisely refrained from doing so and the re- sult is a building very much in the current architectural idiom.
Internally an obvious effort has been made to prevent the enclosure from becoming just another shopping arcade of which there are so many in Hong Kong.
Exposed Concrete
There is a good deal of exposed concrete on the outside of the build- ing and in the approaches and there is a certain amount of it inside as well, which is unusual in an expen- sive, prestige building of this sort. It is questionable whether all of it is of a high enough standard of finish but by and large the effect is clean and simple.
In the car park decks and in the godown, which is not open to the pub- lic, little has been done, understand- ably, to cover up the basic structure of the building. The haunching on the column-and-beam frames is in- clined at a shallow angle and this
PHILIPS
View of the end of the terminal building from the south showing one of the movable gangways at right
Far East Architect & Builder July, 1966
47