HSBC BUILDING
Introduction
Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation building Limiteds’ (HSBC) building is located in the Greater China region in Hong Kong. HSBC serves as headquarter for the HSBC Bank. HSBC was founded by medieval banking ideologist Thomas Sutherland in Hong Kong. The rich history of the HSBC and china’s relationship forged between China and the bank dates back to the rocky economic downtime of the World War II, the great depression of the 1930 and the reinvention of Hong Kong during the post-war. The HSBC building of Hong Kong has seen a three-generation design cycle. The first generation HSBC office was hosted by a structure called Wardley house between 1865. The building was demolished 20 years later in 1886. The second-generation building was built the same year; the first generation was demolished (HSBC 2019). The design of the second generation created a division within the structure and formed almost two separate buildings and resembled the Victorian styles of construction that incorporated an octal dome interior with verandah and colonnades. The third-generation building followed in 1935 having been stripped off its classical look and feel, while developing the interior into a mix of art deco style. The last generation and modern design of the HSBC was an idea developed by Norman Foster, a British architect, Ove Arup and partners did the civil Engineers work and while Wimpey International did the manual construction work to actualizing the design and this took them seven years to complete. The new design started in 1978 and was completed in 1985 (Norman Foster 2015).
HSBC building has surpassed many building and construction records for its technological and other building intricacies. HSBC building is spread across 1 million square meters but spared 100,000 square meters for HSBC to bank to use; contains four low level basement s and stands at 180 meters tall. The building accommodates forty-seven storeys , lifts that use the same technology as NASA , the building installed sixty-two escalators and (HSBC 2019). The design of the building contains a five steel module fabricated in Glasgow by a company known as Scott Lithgow shipbuilders. The building used steel fabrications totaling a weight of up to thirty-thousand tons of steel and four-thousand five hundred tons of aluminium. HSBC building structures is constructed using eight masts that contain four columns each. The building also contains five high steel suspension structures that have a height of a double storey that is responsible for the entire building’s weight load the suspension sit 33.5 meters between the masts and 10.7 meters between the cantilevers (Yiming Guan, Yang Cao, Fu Chen 2014). The use of high tech HSBC suspension structure carries all the weight of the building from the second storey and sparing the ground floor from pillars and columns. The building uses a trick to utilize the natural light. The aim of this paper is to discuss the interior design and the exterior design of HSBC head quarter building in Hong Kong.
INTERIOR DESIGN OF HSBC
The HSBC Interior floor space covers one hundred thousand square meters. The building houses 47 floors not including 4 underground floors. The first floor is spacious spread out by the 40 meters atrium that elevated the heights of the ground floor, which is set for public use. The mirrors on the top of the atrium reflect the natural light into the building to maximize the use of natural light while saving electrical energy in the promise to realize the sustainable architectural designs of the future. The HSBC building makes use of a pinned connection between the floor slabs and masts and cross braces held together by bolts and rivets cast in site and welt joints. The internal transition from floor to floor is controlled by the 62 escalate system installed strategically and symmetrically arranged across the floor plan. The floors construction is made up of movable materials that conceal the complex network of telecommunication, air conditioning systems, and power to provide the flexibility in maintenance and change should it be needed. Lastly, the internal walls are made mobile and can be moved and redesigned easily (WsnSarah, 2017). Norman foster designed HSBC with an elegant yet functional goal in mind, his focus was that the building interior design attributes complemented the exterior expression, the blend of both the intake and the outer harmonized into intimacy and scale design pattern.
EXTERIOR of HSBC BUILDING
From the exterioName the building, the building makes its name as new high- tech architecture high rise bank. The skyscraper stands 180 meters high. The outward of HSBC buildings’ skeleton was made using masts, truss, cantilever, and skin. The building is divided into six major segments at the top level. The building contains gravity loads, the second level from the top is floor slabs followed by a pair of trusses, then the structural mast, and finally, the underground structure. Before the building was constructed, there was a study and evaluation to determine whether the ground was a seismic belt activity ground in anticipation of what natural disasters the building would face. Hong Kong proved to be a seismic free zone, having a low ground acceleration motion of 0.1g~0.15g (0.9m/s2~1.5m/s2); the soil is considered a backfill soil or sediment. Hong Kong is a typhoon ‘s playground; Hong kong receives approximately 3 to four storms a year with a wind of up to 155 miles/h; the building is strong enough to hold the storm because the heavily manifested with steel totaling to 30000 tones and 4500 tons of aluminum.
Conclusion
HSBC is a functional design implemented with thoughts on sustainability. The building is more of an assembly with parts made from different continents. The Interior of the building utilizes natural light reflected by mirrors put on the top of the building. The interior also makes use of easily movable parts, which make it easy to rearrange. The building uses escalators as the main source of transport up and down the building. The interior takes a village setting. The exterior displays expose a skyscraper building structure system that is made up of masts, trusses cantilever and skin, which make up 30000 tones of steel and 4500 tones of aluminum.
References
Arup (2016).”HSBC headquarters 1 queens road central” [ONLINE](Updated on May 2018). Available at <https://www.arup.com/projects/hsbc-headquarters-1-queens-road-central> [Accessed June 2020].
HSBC, (2019). “About HSBC”. [Online] (Updated ) Available at: <https://www.about.hsbc.com.hk/hsbc-in-hong-kong> [Accessed June 2020].
Norman Foster (2015). “Architecture/ Hsbc Building”. [ONLINE] (Updated on January 2018) Available at: <http://architectuul.com/architecture/hsbc-building > [Accessed June 2020].
WsnSarah (2017). “Hong Kong HSBC Building-Norman Foster.” [ONLINE](Updated in 2017) <https://visuallexicon.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/hong-kong-hsbc-building-norman-foster/> Accessed in June 2020.
Yiming Guan, Yang Cao, Fu Chen. (2014). “HSBC.” [ONLINE](Updated on 2014) Available at : <http://faculty.arch.tamu.edu/anichols/courses/applied-architectural-structures/projects-631/Files/HSBC%20Presentation.pdf> [Accessed June 2020].