[Hypnotoad]

Should preface this by saying my digital camera was stolen in Vietnam (f*cker) so I had to rely on a crappy disposable camera to fill in the rest of my trip, which concluded in Hong Kong.

West Kowloon is a major development project on reclaimed and brownfield land. Think of it like as City Place, to the extreme. Or as I like to describe it to my friends, West Kowloon is to City Place as Radiohead is to Muse.

It is the largest single development in Hong Kong's history and the developer(s) were given a 50 year land lease to develop the site in a complex private-public partnership that includes massive infrastructure investments and the redevelopment of brownfield and reclaimed lands for recreational and cultural uses. The highlights of this development (still ongoing) are the massive scale transit-oriented development tower complex above the airport express and orange line that links, via tunnels under the harbour, the central core (2IFC) and the airport to this and other major TOD developments. It is also the site of an underwater tunnel for a major expressway and the new home of a futuristic concept for a cultural centre (approved but undeveloped). The single largest land owner/developer in this site is the public MTR (metro or subway) operator and all the major towers (about 15 built) are connected to the subway, which also doubles as an express airport check-in for all the major airlines.

The pictures suck but they do give you an idea of the scope, size and stunning beauty of this development. The building (in the centre) that is currently under construction will eventually become Hong Kong's tallest tower, at 102 storeys. The residential towers surrounding it vary in shape, size and number of units but are around 60-65 storeys and all surround a courtyard with public amenities, a mall and the subway/aiport station. At present, there are no ground-floor amenities but this is planned.

 

[Tewder]

Oh my, I'm not sure 'beautiful' is the word that comes to mind.

 

[Hypnotoad]

Oh my, I'm not sure 'beautiful' is the word that comes to mind.

Touche. What I meant by that it is not its architecture (although the officer tower renderings look good) but rather the magnitude of the development. It is unreal. And from a development/planning/infrastructure geek like myself, this development is a work of art.

 

[Hipster Duck]

What is motivating all this spectacular growth in Hong Kong? Is the population exploding? Is the per capita GDP rising as swiftly as they did in the 1980s? Is there an office space crunch right now? None of these indexes seem to measure up with the pace of development there right now. London, for example, has one of the tightest commercial real estate markets in the world but it's not like you see dozens of 400m towers being erected in the City.

 

[wyliepoon]

Union Square (the official name of the complex) is no Cityplace. Union Square takes podium building to the extreme, unlike Cityplace where the podiums are small, leaving windswept open spaces at street level. At Union Square, the towers do not really meet the ground. The main entrances of all the buildings are located at the top of the podium, where the main MTR entrance is also located. Sure, the development is transit-oriented, in that the buildings are built around and on top of the MTR, but it has zero-walkability and does not meet the street nicely at all (no street retail... the main pedestrian entrances into the complex are connected to skybridges).

This is an example of what is wrong with residential development right now in HK... while most developments are built on top of transit terminals (often cavernous double-decker bus terminals), but they provide little walkability except for air-conditioned malls built into the podiums and private parks on the roof of the podiums. There is very little creativity in terms of residential tower design- most towers border on brutalism except for the brightly coloured facade. The biggest complaint about residential planning in HK today is the fact that developers build 40-50 storey slab towers on reclaimed waterfront property. Residents living in older neighbourhoods inland complain that these towers would not only ruin their views, but also block cool sea breezes from entering their areas, turning their neighbourhoods into massive heat islands.

However there are a couple of good things about Union Square. The KPF-designed ICC (the 102-storey tower) is a pretty decent design. It will have a Ritz-Carlton Hotel at the top, which will be the tallest hotel in the world when complete. Next door to it is a W Hotel. West Kowloon will also get a new KCR commuter rail station, and a high-speed rail station connecting Hong Kong to mainland China. The MTR partnership with major developers to build this complex might be a good business model for the TTC if it wants to get into developing its subway stations.

 

[ProjectEnd]

/\ Agreed. Hong Kong, especially Kowloon, has far to many of these private rooftop gardens which - while beneficial both to the residents in that they have a place to get some air, and to developers as a selling point completely kill the street atmosphere. The podiums which the gardens etc. rest on turn the street into a series of bland corridors, spaces which are designed purely for the physical action of walking, not the sense of enjoyment which one may get out of it. Personally I think it would be amazing to walk through these developments (satellite cities too) and see it first hand. I think the greenery on top of the podiums would provide some level of compensation for the pseudo-brutalist experience but that would mainly depend on the height and design of the podiums themselves.

 

[wyliepoon]

Updates from Christmas time. The mall in the podium, Elements, has opened. So has the massive park on top of the podium surrounding the Kowloon Station building designed by Terry Farrell. Meanwhile, construction on the supertall ICC (International Commerce Centre) continues.

(entrance to ICC is the brown temporary partition on the second floor of the mall)

 

[Kilgore Trout]

So weird. It's like an island.

I stayed in Sorrento for a week in 2005. The podium was empty and it felt like we were living in a fortress.