No_6_April_1964 — Page 79

PING COMPLEX

THE

' STEREOTYPE

At ground-floor level, there is to be a separate entrance to the shop- ping concourse (with access from there by lift to offices and hotel upper floors) and also a drive-in through the building direct to the main ground-floor entrance of the hotel roughly in the middle of the site. The basement will provide common parking space (125 cars) for all sections of the building.

From first floor to third floor level. the shopping arca extends the full width of the building forming a bridge to the hotel block and inte grating with it on these three floors. But, as well as this, the architects wanted to ensure that the three shopping floors should not be exces- sively isolated from each other but should rather, as far as possible, be inter-connected vertically as well as horizontally into a single homoge neous shopping area, providing the shopper with much of the spacious- ness and bustle of a large department

store.

To achieve this, an ingenious sys- tem of staggered floor levels is to be adopted. As the sectional drawing shows, the ground floor at the op- posite end of the building from the hotel will be a level about mid-way between the ground floor and first floor levels of the hotel itself. the first-floor level mid-way between the hotel's first and second floors, and so on. Escalators will take shoppers the first to second floor of the hotel block and from ground to first floor at the other end of the building. For shoppers on these floors, moving to the next shopping level, up or down. will be merely a matter of one short flight of stairs to the next half floor.

▲ Bird's eye view of proposed Ming Court with Orchard Road in the foreground.

▲ The lower floor terraces are intended to produce a sculptured effect and eliminate the "glass & concrete cliff" effect associated with many tower block developments. This view of the model of Ming Court shows the method of integration between first and third floors. ▼