LOCALLY quarried, dressed granite
is used to clad all facades of the new Bank of Canton Building in Hong Kong. Approximately 75,000 sq. ft. of 3 in. facing blocks in this material and 5,000 lineal feet run of mullions was employed.
The granite, quarried in Diamond Hill and fashioned in a stonemason's yard at Hung Hom, was closely checked for uniformity of colour. mineral assemblage, texture and freshness. Professor S. G. Davies, petrological consultant, made regular visits to both sites for inspection and sampling.
The 24-storey bank and office build- ing has its main frontage to Des Voeux Road in the heart of the bank- ing area for the City of Victoria. Its design is a functional solution to the planning requirements and comprises basically a two-storey basement, bank podium of four storeys and an office tower of 18 storeys.
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The lower basement is used for the air-conditioning plant, while the safe deposit vault and the foreign de- partment occupy the upper basement. The controlling office on the first floor has rooms for the senior officers, the auditing and the correspondence de- partment.
rooms.
On the second floor are the board room,
officers' lounge and dining Terrace gardens, with pools, fountains and planting, are also pro- vided at this level to give a welcome breathing space in the congested cen- tral area.
Six steps run the whole width of the building front and wide openings on the ground floor form an invit- ing entrance to the offices and to the spacious banking hall.
To keep the banking hall free from closely spaced columns, two-storey deep steel girders spanning 47 ft. 9 in. were installed to support four columns from the office tower above a total load of some 1,200 tons for each girder.
Giant girders
Dorman Long (Bridge and En- gineering) Ltd., Middlesbrough, UK. designed and supplied the structural steelwork. The frames were subjected to a computer analysis, the presence of the large span girders necessitating the development of techniques to as- certain the influence of these girders on other structural members.
Architectural planning made pos- sible a girder of 13 ft. depth, thus minimising deflection under load but calling for the construction of the gir- ders in situ.
The girders, each weighing 37 tons, consist of top and bottom flanges, two webs (each in four pieces) and horizontal and vertical diaphragms. These components were shipped in separate pieces from the UK ready for site assembly.
Each piece was lifted and placed
Far East BUILDER, May 1968.
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Bank of Canton viewed from Des Voeux Road Central
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