david ho

Demolition has already began when we first being asked to help out on this project.  Original design was by Broadway Malyan, it doesn’t look attractive, so we decided to help making it better by proposing a new scheme.  After doing the Nan Fung Tower Podium, we somehow found our own design language, so we decided to imply it here as well.  The building site is located in the well-known Huahai Road, lots of shopping mall were built along the road.  Times Square is just right across the site.  Location is prime, the problem is that we have to retain the existing structure, mainly the irregular-spaced and closely-spaced columns which has a great impact to the interior space.  We also got a residential tower and an office tower above us, sharing the structure.  During consturction period, the existing residents from the tower aboe got upset because of the noise and started complaining about our new features might block their view.  Eventually they complained to the city planning office and lead to a ton of troubles that delayed the construction time as well as getting the final government documents for occupancy.  They did this because it quite common that the government would make the developer to compensate the residence for damages.  They want money afterall.

NF had acquired a local developer in Shanghai a few years ago, they only has a project team but not a design team.  So we were asked to cooperate with them and share our knowledge.  We still keep Broadway Malyan as the local architects because we have no knowledge of China’s building code and it would be great for them to communicate with other consultants as well.  Our role is being the design architect, which is not easy because it is hard to get the quality we want.  We have produced DD drawings but at the end it heavily relied on in-situ communication and the millions of hand-sketched details I made.   

Design started off with one elevation module, adjusting proportions and size of the stone members and glass panels, then multipy this module logic throughtout the whole building elevation.

We had a hard time controlling the stone quality.  Originally we spec limestone for exterior but changed to granite because shanghai management afraid that limestone is easy to erode overtime, and also because the original budget did not have the allowance.  We ended up using a very cheap granite from a stone supplier at Shan Dong province up north.  The factory was so poor that workers has to work outside and there wasn't even proper machineries.  We are also very concerned about workmanship so we had to make a mock-up of a typical elevation module for quality as well as lighting inspection

Interior was a mix of whtie calacatta tile and bronze metal.  This is the first time we use these 3mm tile with Calacatta stone pattern and they worked very great.  We couldn't afford real Clacatta stone and their variance tend to be very unpredictable in china so it is actually better to use these tile as they have consistant quality.