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Scan & Deliver Request (TN#: 661817] Subject: Scan & Deliver Request (TN#: 661817) From: "Scan & Deliver Staff" <[email protected]> Date: 8/12/2016 8:25 AM To: "Lehman Library" <[email protected]> Scan & Deliver request for: TN#: 661817 Transaction Date: 8/12/2016 8:25:05 AM Patron Name : Weiping Wu Patron Status : Faculty Call Number: HT147.C48 S5324 2011 Location: leh / Article/Chapter Title: The making of Hong Kong: from vertical to volumetric Author: Shelton, Barrie, 1944- Tournal/Book Title: The making of Hong Kong : from vertical to volumetric / Barrie Shelton, lustyna Karakiewicz [and] Thomas Kvan. Vol: Issue: Year: Pages: chapter 5, pp 99-109; chapter Please be in touch if you have any questions. Pleasant reflections, Scan & Deliver Staff Columbia University Libraries Office: 208A Butler Library E-mail: doc-del(31ibrary.Columbia.edu Phone: 212-854-5327 lofi 8/12/2016 8:48 AM THE MAKING OF HONG KONG From Vertical to Volumetric Barrie Shelton Justyna Karakiewicz Thomas Kvan Routledge Taylor Si Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2011 by Routledge This paperback edition first published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire 0X14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011, 2014 Barrie Shelton, Justyna Karakiewicz and Thomas Kvan This book was commissioned and edited by Alexandrine Press, Marcham, Oxfordshire The right of the authors has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Shelton, Barrie, 1944- The making of Honk Kong: from vertical to volumetric / Barrie Shelton, Justyna Karakiewicz, and Thomas Kvan. p. cm. — (Planning, history and environment) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Cities and towns—China—Hong Kong—History. 2. Cities and towns—Growth. I. Karakiewicz, Justyna, 1954— II. Kvan, Thomas. III. Title. HT147.C48S5324 2011 307.76095125—dc22 2010024635 ISBN: 978-0-415-48701-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-74627-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-83560-9 (ebk) Typeset in Aldine and Swiss by PNR Design, Didcot MIX P « p *r from responsible sourcss FSC FSC* C011748 Vertical and Volumetric Post 1980 Through the 1960s and 1970s, manufacturing had dominated Hong Kong’s economy. In the latter decade, the goods emerging from the factories became more diverse and sophisticated to include electrical, electronic and optical items, watches, and chemical products. But while Hong Kong’s manufacturing was changing, so was its larger economy: just as 1963 was a marker in the emergence of an industrial Hong Kong, 1980 provided another significant marker, again heralding an important new phase in the city’s economic development. In this year financial services nosed ahead of manufacturing in the value of exports, accounting for 26 per cent of exports: that was 1 per cent more than manufacturing (Lo, 1992, p. 15). Following the introduction of more open Chinese trading and foreign investment 100 • THE MAKING OF HONG KONG policies, Hong Kong was also regaining its entrepot and service role. With these changes, and accompanying developments in bankng, communications and transportation, Hong Kong was on the verge of true world city status. And it was during this phase that the city emerged quite literally is the skyscraper capital of the world. A World City Rises Tall buildings were made possible over the last five decades of the nineteenth century through a series of technical innovations. First was the invention of the elevator by Elisha Graves Otis in New Aork in 1852 allowing people to move rapidly skywards within buildings without personal exertion. This was put to practical use five years later in Haughwout’s department store, at 488 Broadway in Manhattan. Second was the use of the iron and, in mm, steel structural frame, which enabled a building to rise without the necessity for thick load-bearing walls and with a repetitive stack of identical floor plates. These inventions allowed for the slender tower, thin slab, or dumpier tall building around a light court. The third invention that allowed buildings to be both high and expand their girths was mechanical ventilation and Willis H. Courier’s air conditioning of 1902. Chicago, assisted by its great fire of 1871 and the net d to redevelop quickly, was the most significant early player in vertical urbanism - starting with the ten-storey Home Insurance Building in 1885. However, New York was quick to overtake as the tall building capital, reaching seventy-seven storeys in 1929 with the Chrysler Building at 241 m, surpassed by the Empire State at 381 m and 102 floors two years later. Since that time buildings have reached greater heights in New \brk and elsewhere, including Hong Kong. However, the 1 itter, though always dense, remained surprisingly low-rise for many decades. For instance, top hotels (such as the Hong Kong and Gloucester) would employ generc >us floor-to-ceiling heights, wide shady verandas, cross-ventilation, fans and lifts, but rise to six or, at most, eight storeys. Prior to World War II the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (1935), at thirteen floors and 70 m, stood significantly higher than any other building in the city: it was not eclipsed for fifteen years and then only marginally by its rival, the Bank of China which rose to 76 m. The rise in the relative heights of tall buildings did not proceed smoothly but advanced in quantum jumps. Over the seven years from 1966 to 1973, Hong Kong’s tallest buildings shifted through a modest six storeys: from twenty-eight through thirty-one to thirty-four floors, to top the memorable 100 m mark. In the latter year, the Connaught Centre (easily identified by its colloquial nomenclature, which approximated to ‘the tower of a 1000 arseholes’) leapt to the fifty-plus storeys mark at 178 m from which Hong Kong’s tallest buildings then rose steadily but very consistently over exactly thirty years to reach 415 m in 2003. The next quantum shiit came with the rise of the International Commerce Centre and thirty additional storeys: this has another significance for it is in Kowloon, and is indicative of che centrality and potential VERTICAL AND VOLUMETRIC • 101 oftlie Peninsula, now freed from the tyranny of the flight paths into old Kai Tak Airport (closed 1998). Thus, with its expanded role as an international financial services cemre, Hong Kong joined New York to embrace the skyscraper. But unlike New York, which has taken the building type as an instrument for concentration in and towards a centre, Hong Kong has taken it as an instrument for dispersal - both concentration and scattered dispersal. Wh;.t this seemingly contradictory ph r;se means is that clusters of very tall towers are to be seen at the centre and periphery of the continuous built-up area, and almost 5.1. Hong Kong building heights - the sequence everywhere between; and they are of tallest buildings also to be found in scattered new towns beyond. Further, as indicated above, skyscrapers would be even more extensivelv distributed, had not the old Kai Tak airport been attached to the Kowloon Peninsula, where aircraft movements limited building heights across a substantial area until the last decade. The hill barriers may have been slow to penetrate, but once breached, reluctance on the part of the authorities to extend city building into the New Territories evaporated quickly. Tunnels and train lines were, in a short time, commonplace. Since the completion of the ‘first set’ described in the previous chapter, two additional road tunnels have been driven through the Lion Rock ridge; and several other tunnels facilitating roads or rails have been drilled through more distant ranges effectively bringing New Territories new towns ‘closer’ together. Further there are plans to take the railway through the Hong Kong Island ridge to Aberdeen. In addition, two more roads and three more rail lines have crossed the harbour. The result is that the New Territories have witnessed rapid growth, and taken an increasingly large proportion of Hong Kong’s expanded population. New towns have continued to grow in number and in size: thus in addition to earlier generation developments, the 1980s and subsequent years have seen Tseung Kwan O (further east), Tin Shui Wai (far north-west), Tsing Yi and Tung Chun (both further west) added to the rail-connected list of new towns. To accommodate them, reclamation has continued at a rapid pace. Nevertheless, while land and urban areas have been extended, there have been few fundamental changes in the approach to new settlement development. In the 102 • THE MAKING OF HONG KONG main, new towns continue to be in public transport-orientated small footprint high-rise forms, with rail playing a crucial role in linking them all together. Hong Kong’s new towns, especially Sha Tin, are perhaps the most extensive, faithful and longest running production of built forms anywhere to employ CIAM and variant Modernist principles and forms in such high concentrations but with a strong rail 5.2.