No_6_April_1964 — Page 106

ATTTTTTTTM

*

BANK BUILDS MORE

FLATS FOR

GROWING STAFF

ARCHITECTS:—– A.V. Alvares & Associates, and

R.J.M. Williams, M.A. Dip. Arch., A.R.I.B.A.

USO Apartments. a 10 storey

building for the growing Por- tuguese staff of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. will

#

be one of the first structures in the Colony to make use of Se-Duct an entirely new method of installing gas water heaters and other gas ap pliances.

The new system, for use in multi- storey buildings, is a vertical, open- ended, concrete duct running the full height of a building. It sup- plies air to and carries waste gases away from the gas appliances.

Six of these new ducts are being installed in Luso Apartments. which is situated in Warwick Road. Kow- loon (N.K.I.L. 3847).

Following is a brief description. of Luso Apartments. The structure will be situated adjacent to three older Portuguese residential blocks off Warwick Road.

are

These flats. built in 1956. contained in three blocks. They are let to Portuguese staff of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank at a nominal rental. They replace and are in every way identical with flats built in 1949 on 115,000 square feet of land in College Road, Kow- loon. However, the original flats, de- signed by Palmer and Turner. were in the way of the then proposed new airstrip and the Government gave the Bank the present 125,000 square feet site in exchange for the old site.

As the number of the Portuguese staff kept on increasing, the Chief Manager of the Bank. Mr. J.A.H. Saunders, arranged for a new block comprising 57 flats to be built on part of the vacant land and flaced