Cyberport Offers a New Architectural Slang That Defies Both Traditional and the Popular
For 156 years, Hong Kong had been under British imperial rule. Through that time, her people acquired a mutated sense of identity unique from the rest of China. A strange urban fabric blankets the city that makes it so attractive to the mobile and impatient, the way New York City beckons the ambitious country American. Hong Kong architecture also has this ripe look of cosmopolitan Asia that is so different from other capitals. It is tall, sharp, accentuated and polished but at the same time indirect and enigmatic. The Oriental softness is almost absent, capitulating to a design character of might and power. It is the architectural language of consumerism at its summit.
Language is a living instrument that unites a people and develops culture. Architecture as an evolving art is an inaudible language yet at times is so deafening you cannot ignore it. Arquitectonica’s Cyberport speaks a new design language that defies the local slang and defies local sensibilities even more.
Located on the landfill of the original Telegraph Bay between the densely tropical hills of Hong Kong Island and the ocean, Pacific Century Cyberworks’ Cyberport is a 532,000 square meter titan reclining across a sprawling 24 hectares of land along the coast. Do note that words such as “reclining” and “sprawling” are alien in Hong Kong development mantras. The cluster of eight buildings, which have won the AIA Award of Excellence, the Gold Bienal Award, the Intelligent Building of the Year Award and a host of other awards, houses offices, a retail mall, a 175-room hotel, serviced apartments and residential towers.
From a distance, the project snakes along the coast like a blue dragon paying quiet respect to the coastline from which its sinuous form was derived. Its horizontal lines and “ground-scraping” form evoke a sense of calm, inclusiveness and stability. The usual emotive qualities associated with horizontal lines and spaces end there, however—there is nothing sleepy or static about this reclining giant. The buildings are a dynamic collage of transparent glass volumes set on a rugged stone base, a contrast of modernist architecture against a natural setting. Approaching from the coastal artery of Sha Wan Drive, the collage of trapezoids and parallelograms reveal themselves as bands of blue and green glass panes, accentuated by silver streaks of steel window frame nosings. Powerful acute corners provide climax to the dragon’s architectural prose, which is so dissimilar to that prevailing in the choked metropolis. The language is expansive, pioneering and purposeful, with volumes conveying velocity and acceleration.
With Hong Kong seeking to redefine itself as the information technology hub of Asia, Pacific Century Cyberworks (PCCW) wanted a new building typology that would symbolize their leadership in the field, and they got it. (Interestingly, the Cyberport’s situation on what was once Telegraph Bay yields a rather neat symbolism: the original information revolution started by the telegraph is replaced by the new Internet-based information revolution.) Further, PCCW recognized that the new typology would have to have new parameters for the workspace to provide the right environment for creativity.
Creativity thrives in interaction, says architect Matthew McCullum, associate director and regional principal of the Arquitectonica design firm. Creativity prospers in humanizing spaces, escapes from the electronic workstation. Thus it was determined that the project would have places of interaction, places of shared support and services facilities, where the two key forces shaping the new information industry—the multinational corporate giants with resources and distribution networks, and the new young upstarts with new ideas yet seeking capital support—could meet and exchange ideas. This notion of the primacy of creativity then led to the idea of multiple buildings coming together in one shared, inclusive building.
Upon my inquiry on the firm’s design philosophy, McCullum begged to differ from equally globally popular designers in having a single, all-projects-applicable belief system. For Arquitectonica, projects are allowed their unique “contextual” philosophy, from which the branded character of the firm reveals itself.
Viewing it from the exterior, an intelligent dual reading of form is required from the viewer as you are tugged between appreciating it as a single building or a collection of individual buildings coming to a contributed whole. The dragon composition begins with a taller “head” facing the green and anchoring the site at the base of the valley, establishing itself as the prime or anchor building in the hierarchy. The buildings rapidly descend in height to allow residential towers behind the site to retain views to the water. As views are cleared, the volumes of the office complex rise in height, resulting in an undulating composition that culminates in a taller “tail” building that marks the arrival from the residential district.
It is in the interiors that the firm takes its gospel of contextual design meaning and metaphor to an admirable height. I am not a fan of color, and I am drawn to the cold, monochrome palette of Central Hong Kong, thinking it superior. Cyberport however, put me to shame as I found its color-washed interior truly engaging; and certainly not in any kindergarten sort of manner. McCullum in fact intimated that a local bureaucrat found the matte and chromatic composition appalling and would have pursued its disapproval had it not been for the designer’s persistence. It was, according to the official, too un-Hong Kong.
Central to this plan of masses is an “IT Street” that connects nodes of vertical corridors. Alternating warm browns and beiges flood the floor finished with engineered wood. The walls are articulated in glass and pre-painted aluminum plate paneling along this corridor for nearly a kilometer. This same artery serves as the intersection points of various tenants to promote this creative environment. As you traverse from end to end, you will notice themes of color and finishes subtly change to define one building from another, but this metaphor to China is constantly present: vertical lines of random slight angles that mimic the criss-crossing of bamboo stalks.
In one of our stops, Arquitectonica business development director Courtney Davies explained that the firm departed from the 1990s de rigueur form finding process of starting with iconic references that is often accompanied by blind form development oblivious to project site and cultural context. Instead, the firm focused on responsive contextual form development that largely results in post-occupancy property value appreciation. It thus deflected misguided project briefs set by clients that dictate the architectural language rather than promote the unrestricted evolution of the form. What emerged was an interesting collection of projects that reflect this quiet but powerful architecture that is uniquely Arquitectonica’s.
At the very beginning of this linear composition is a huge four-storey high atrium. This is where chauffeured guests alight before a wide, floating undulating wall of stained wood almost twelve meters tall. It marks your arrival and your welcome. McCullum, during the design development of this particular wall feature, drew the undulations in discreet and shallow
waves in keeping with the cultural context of the host city. At which point, Bernardo Brescia, the main man of Arquitectonica himself, thought the wall needed more intensity and passion. He drew it over in wild and mad tsunamis of undulation—and then he was happy.
After immersing yourself in Hong Kong Central, see the famous passionate wall for yourself. It will tell you, “Welcome. We speak a new language here. Let us teach you how.”
With permission from BluPrint Magazine. Reposted from Volume 08, October 2009. Photographs by Eric Niemy, Dick Chow, Aaron Chow and Amral Imran.
