HSBC Main Building is a headquarters building of The Hongkong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation, which is today a wholly owned subsidiary of London-based
HSBC Holdings. It is located along the southern side of Statue Square near the
location of the old City Hall, Hong Kong. The previous HSBC building was
built in 1935 and pulled down to make way for the current building. The
address remains as 1 Queen's Road Central. The building can be reached
from Exit K of Central MTR Station and facing Statue Square.
History The first HSBC building was Wardley
House, used as HSBC office between 1865 to 1882 on the present site. In 1864 the
lease cost HKD 500 a month. After raising a capital of HKD 5 million, the
bank opened its door in 1865. It was demolished in 1886 and rebuilt in the
same year. The main feature of the second building
design was the division of the structure into two almost separate buildings. The
building on Queen's Road Central was in Victorian style with a verandah,
colonnades and an octagonal dome, whereas the arcade which harmonised with
the adjacent buildings was constructed on Des Voeux Road.
In 1935, the second building was demolished and a third design was
erected. The third design used part of the land of the old City Hall, and was
built in a mixed Art Deco and Stripped Classical style. During the Japanese
occupation of Hong Kong, the building served as the government headquarters.
Locally, it was the first building in Hong Kong to be fully air-conditioned.
By the 1970s the bank had outgrown its headquarters; departments were scattered
into offices all over Central Hong Kong, and it was obvious that such a
"solution" to the space limitations could not continue indefinitely. In 1978
the bank decided to tear down its headquarters and rebuild it again. The
building was finished on 18 November 1985. At the time, it was the most
expensive building in the world. The first major addition to the
building, designed by Hong Kong's One Space Ltd, was completed on 23 November
2006, in the form of a ground floor lobby that improves security access to
the upper floors and creates a prestigious reception area. Its design
and construction included the installation of the "Asian Story Wall",
a multimedia installation consisting of twin banks of 30 seamless plasma screens
displaying archived bank heritage and artworks.
The atrium of the HSBC building was the site of the Occupy Hong Kong protests
which maintained a presence in the building from 15 October 2011 until
their eviction in September 2012. Design
The new building was designed by the British architect Norman, Lord Foster
and civil & structural engineers Ove Arup & Partners with service design by
J. Roger Preston & Partners, and was constructed by Wimpey International.
From the concept to completion, it took seven years. The building is 180 metres
high with 47 storeys and four basement levels. The building has a modular
design consisting of five steel modules prefabricated in the UK by Scott Lithgow
Shipbuilders near Glasgow, and shipped to Hong Kong. About 30,000 tons of steel
and 4,500 tons of aluminium were used. The original design was heavily inspired
by the Douglas Gilling designed Qantas International Centre in Sydney.
The new Lobby and its 2-part Asian Story Wall were designed by Greg Pearce, of
One Space Limited. Pearce was also the Principal Architect of the Hong Kong
Airport Express station. Conceived as a minimalist glass envelope, the new lobby
is designed to be deferential to Foster's structure and appears almost to
be part of the original. The building is also one of the few to
not have elevators as the primary carrier of building traffic. Instead,
elevators only stop every few floors, and floors are interconnected by
escalators. Characteristics
The main characteristic of HSBC Hong Kong headquarters is its absence of
internal supporting structure. Another notable feature is that natural
sunlight is the major source of lighting inside the building. There is a bank of
giant mirrors at the top of the atrium, which can reflect natural sunlight into
the atrium and hence down into the plaza. Through the use of natural
sunlight, this design helps to conserve energy. Additionally, sun shades are
provided on the external facades to block direct sunlight going into the
building and to reduce heat gain. Instead of fresh water, sea water is
used as coolant for the air-conditioning system.
All flooring is made from lightweight movable panels, under which lies a
comprehensive network of power, telecommunication, and air-conditioning
systems. This design was to allow equipment such as computer terminals to
be installed quickly and easily. Because of the urgency to finish the
project, the construction of the building relied heavily on off-site
prefabrication; components were manufactured all over the world. For
example, the structural steel came from Britain; the glass, aluminium cladding
and flooring came from the United States while the service modules came from
Japan. The inverted 'va' segments of the
suspension trusses spanning the construction at double-height levels is
the most obvious characteristic of the building. It consists of eight groups of
four aluminium-clad steel columns which ascend from the foundations up through
the core structure, and five levels of triangular suspension trusses which are
locked into these masts. Feng shui
The early British settlers in Hong Kong had an interest in feng shui; thus, most
of the earliest buildings in Hong Kong, and many buildings constructed
thereafter, were built with the philosophies of feng shui in mind. The
Chinese believe that those who have a direct view of a body of water—whether
it is a river, a sea, or an ocean—are more likely to prosper than those who do
not. The HSBC building has a wide open area in front of it, with no other
buildings blocking its view of Victoria Harbour; thus, it is considered to have
"good feng shui". Even though the Hong Kong Government is
proposing extending the existing coastline further out into the harbour
in its latest land reclamation project, it will still set aside space so that no
new developments will block the HSBC Building's view of the harbour.
= HSBC Cannons = In the CBC Television series Doc Zone
episode "Superstitious Minds", Writer, Researcher & Associate Producer Tom
Puchniak asserts that the design of the nearby Bank of China Tower ignored feng
shui principles, and created instant controversy by evoking two knife edges,
one pointing towards the British Government House, another towards the
HSBC building. After the Bank of China building opened, a series of mishaps
occurred, including the death of the Governor, and a downturn in the city's
economy. To defend against the negative energy from the Bank of China building,
HSBC installed two concrete cannons on the roof, pointing directly at the Bank
of China. According to feng shui master Paul Hung, this solved the problem, and
HSBC experienced "no harmful results after that."
Lion statues When HSBC decided to build its third
Headquarters at 1 Queen's Road Central, opened in 1935, it commissioned two
bronze lions from Shanghai-based British sculptor W W Wagstaff. This commission
was inspired by two earlier lions that had been ordered for the new Shanghai
office opened in 1923. Cast by J W Singer & Sons in the English town of
Frome, to a design by Henry Poole RA, these lions had quickly become part of
the Shanghai scene, and passers-by would affectionately stroke the lions in the
belief that power and money would rub off on them. They became known as
Stephen and Stitt: an in-joke. Stephen was named for A G Stephen, formerly
Manager Shanghai, and in 1923 the Chief Manager of HSBC, and G H Stitt, the then
Manager Shanghai. Stephen is depicted roaring, Stitt quiescent, and again
insiders said that this represented the characters of these two famous bankers.
Wagstaff worked with "Shanghai Arts and Crafts" foreman Chou Yin Hsiang who in
an interview with John Loch of HSBC's house magazine "Group News" in June 1977
recalled that when he first joined Arts and Crafts he worked with Wagstaff for
two years to make the lions, without having to learn a word of English:
Wagstaff spoke perfect Shanghai dialect. Hunch-backed, Wagstaff was nicknamed
"Lao Doo Pei", meaning "Old Hunchback". His son, inevitably, was called "Sau Doo
Pei"—"Young Hunchback". Wagstaff had two sons—Don, killed in Naval service in the
war, and Alex, killed while interned in Shanghai by the Japanese. Chou Yin
Hsiang himself came to Hong Kong in 1935, and by 1977 was the proprietor of
Jeh Hsing Metal Works—and still casting bronze for HSBC.
Like the Shanghai lions, the Hong Kong lions became objects of veneration, and
focii of the Bank's perceived excellent feng shui. Young couples still bring
their toddlers to stroke the paws and noses of the statues hoping for luck and
prosperity. When the 1935 building closed its doors
for the last time on 26 June 1981 the Lions had been moved to the annexe on 19
June 1981. Demolition, by China Swiss Engineers, started on 6 July 1981. The
lions were temporarily moved on 4 June 1982 to Statue Square, opposite the main
entrance. As a mark of the respect the lions were held in, the move to Statue
Square, and the move back in 1985, were accompanied by the chairman Sir Michael
Sandberg and senior management of the Bank and the placement of the lions both
temporarily and in their current locations was made only after extensive
consultations with feng shui practitioners.
Their 4-year sojourn in the annexe and Statue Square aside, the lions have only
left their positions as guardians of the Des Voeux Road entrance of the Bank
once: they were confiscated by the Japanese and sent to Japan to be melted
down. Luckily the war ended before this could happen, and the lions were
recognised by an American sailor in a dockyard in Osaka in 1945. They were
returned a few months later and restored to their original positions in October
1946. The Hong Kong lions are also called
Stephen and Stitt, and the Hong Kong Stephen has bullet or shrapnel scars in
its left hind-quarters dating from the fighting in the Battle of Hong Kong.
When this pair of lions was used as the model for the pair commissioned for the
new UK Headquarters of HSBC in 2002, Zambian-born New Zealand sculptor Mark
Kennedy was asked not to reproduce these "war wounds" in the copies. They had to
earn their own battle-scars. The following is a list of bronze copies
and re-casts of the HSBC lions: In China:
Shanghai – sculpted by Henry Poole RA, cast by J W Stinger & Sons. The
originals are held by the Shanghai Historic Museum and are separately on
display at the Museum's display room under the Oriental Pearl Tower and the
Shanghai Banking Museum, both in Lujiazui.
Hong Kong – modelled on Shanghai originals; sculpted by W W Wagstaff,
cast by Shanghai Arts and Crafts. Shanghai – copies of Shanghai originals,
commissioned by the government-owned Shanghai Pudong Development Bank after
it obtained the former HSBC building. Shanghai – copies of Hong Kong lions.
In the United Kingdom London – copies of Hong Kong lions; cast
by Bronze Age Foundry, Limehouse, at the direction of Mark Kennedy.
Various other HSBC branches throughout the world feature small-scaled replicas
of these originals, with varying degrees of faithfulness. Other HSBC branches
often feature guardian lions to different designs, such as Chinese
guardian lions. Lighting scheme
In 2003, the Hong Kong Tourism Board developed a harbour lighting plan called
"A Symphony of Lights", a large-scale multimedia show featuring lighting,
laser, music, and occasionally special pyrotechnics effects during festivals,
to promote tourism in Hong Kong. The show is based on the illumination of key
buildings on the Hong Kong Island side, and is best viewed from the Kowloon side
across the Victoria Harbour. The HSBC Hong Kong headquarters building is one
of the participating buildings in the show. The building has been installed
with 716 intelligent lighting units, including 450 Martin Professional Cyclo
03 colour changing fluorescent fixtures in the glass stairwells, Martin
Professional Exterior 600's and Exterior 200 fixtures on five levels, 8 search
lights, and over one kilometre of LED lighting around the top. Completed by
mid-December 2003, the cost of installation is estimated to be HK$5.5
million. Intelligent lighting is distributed
across six sections of the building: Vertical Ladder Trusses
Exoskeleton: Inner + Outer Refuge Floors
Northwest Stairwell Eastern Stairwells
Roof Building Maintenance Units HSBC has always aimed to adopt a new
lighting scheme because Foster did not pay much attention to the illumination
of the building at nighttime. See also
List of buildings and structures in Hong Kong
Economy of Hong Kong HSBC Centre in Tai Kok Tsui, Kowloon
HSBC Buildings around the world Virtual Tours: HSBC Headquarters
Building, Statue Square, Hong Kong References
External links The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation: Unique Headquarters HSBC Headquarters Building in Hong Kong
– from different angles Foster and Partners
One Space Limited Recent illumination of the HSBC
Headquarters Building in Hong Kong