The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who seek them
Skyscrapers
Lippo Centre – Hong Kong
Sep 12th
The Lippo Centre was constructed on reclaimed waterfront land in Hong Kong Island’s Admiralty district. On its completion in 1988, however, it had a different name: the Bond Centre, which proclaimed its developer as being the Bond Corporation.
Built to a design by US architect Paul Rudolph, the two towers that make the Bond Centre so memorable were erected on a four-storey podium section. Respectively referred to as Lippo Centre 1 and Lippo Centre 2, Lippo Centre 1 is the smallest, at 564 feet – 172m – in height with 44 storeys, while Lippo Centre 2 measures 610 feet – 186m –and has 48 floors. More >
Sydney Aurora Place
Sep 12th
Renzo Piano’s Aurora Place is located in central Sydney, on Macquarie Street, which marks the boundary of the city’s financial district with an even wall of regularly shaped blocks. The street also runs alongside the Royal Botanic Gardens, and Jorn Utzon’s Opera House beyond, reaching out toward the sea.
Piano attempted to engage his building with this architectural icon by using plastic forms recalling the sails of the boats in the bay, which also provided the inspiration for Utzon’s design. Indeed, the glass curtain walls that envelop Aurora Place are shaped like sails and extend above the actual building, emphasizing their lightness. More >
Cheung Kong Centre – Hong Kong
Sep 12th
American architect Cesar Pelli is world famous for his buildings that reinterpret historical forms using cutting-edge technologies. This strategy has proved to be particularly successful in the Asian metropolises that seek symbols associated with their traditions, but which are nonetheless capable of expressing their contemporary economic and financial prestige.
Pelli’s Hong Kong buildings propose two such archetypal figures: the monolithic prism for the Cheung Kong Centre, and the stepped-back form for Two International Finance Centre. More >
Vienna Millennium Tower
Sep 12th
At 663 feet, the Millennium Tower is the tallest building in Austria and one of the tallest in Europe – at least until the completion of the skyscrapers destined to redesign the City of London’s skyline. Since its construction in 1999, the Millennium Tower has become the symbol of the population boom experienced by Vienna over the past 20 years, and the ensuing change in the city’s urban planning policies.
Indeed, during this period, the cautious conservatism that ensured architectural continuity with the old city, has been replaced with the desire to transform Vienna into a great modern metropolis, where the emphasis has shifted from the horizontal to the vertical dimension. More >
Shun Hing Square – Shenzhen
Sep 12th
The extraordinary development of Shenzhen, which in a short space of time has grown from a poor fishing village into an important business and financial centre able to compete with nearby Hong Kong, has required buildings capable of symbolizing this change. It was precisely Shenzhen’s proximity to Hong Kong and the wish to assume its role as the regions’ business and financial hub that prompted the Chinese government to make the city a Special Economic Zone.
This induced many investors and professionals to move their businesses to the area, triggering the exponential growth of the village, whose population rose from 30,000 to the current 13 million in the space of a couple of decades. Its rapid development has transformed the entire bank of the Sham Chun River, which marks the boundary with Hong Kong, into an unbroken metropolis that has become known as the Instant City due to the speed with which it has risen and generated the icons that define its distinctive new identity. More >
