Central Plaza, Hong Kong
Encyclopedia
Central Plaza is the third tallest skyscraper
in Hong Kong
. With a height of 374 m (1,227 ft), Central Plaza is only surpassed by 2 IFC
in Central
and the ICC
in West Kowloon
. The building is located at 18 Harbour Road
, in Wan Chai
on Hong Kong Island
. It was the tallest building in Asia
from 1992 to 1996, until the Shun Hing Square
in Shenzhen
, People's Republic of China
, was built. The 78-storey building was completed in August 1995. The building surpassed the Bank of China Tower as the tallest building in Hong Kong until the completion of 2IFC.
Central Plaza was also the tallest reinforced concrete
building in the world, until it was surpassed by CITIC Plaza
, Guangzhou
. The building uses a triangular floor plan
. On the top of the tower is a four-bar neon clock that indicates the time by displaying different colours in 15 minute intervals, blinking at the change of the quarter.
An anemometer
is installed on the tip of the building's mast; the anemometer sits at 378 m (1,240 ft) above sea level. The mast has a height of 102 m (335 ft). It also houses the world's highest church inside a skyscraper, Sky City Church.
Central Plaza is made up of two principal components: a free standing 368 m (1,207 ft) high office tower and a 30.5 m (100 ft) high podium block attached to it. The tower is made up of three sections: a 30.5 m (100 ft) high tower base forming the main entrance and public circulation spaces; a 235.4 m (772 ft) tall tower body containing 57 office floors, a sky lobby and five mechanical plant floors; and the tower top consist of six mechanical plant floors and a 102 m (335 ft) tall tower mast.
The ground level public area along with the public sitting out area form an 8,400 m² (90,400 sq ft) landscaped garden with fountain, trees and artificial stone paving. No commercial element is included in the podium. The first level is a public thoroughfare for three pedestrian bridges linking the Mass Transit Railway, the Convention and Exhibition Centre and the China Resource Building. By turning these space to public use, the building got 20% plot ratio more as bonus. The shape of the tower is not truly triangular but with its three corners cut off to provide better internal office spaces.
Nonetheless, the triangular building plan causes the air handling unit (AHU) room in the internal core also to assume a triangular configuration with only limited space. This makes the adoption of a standard AHU not feasible. Furthermore, all air-conditioning ducting, electrical trunking and piping gathered inside the core area had to be squeezed into a very narrow and congested corridor ceiling void.
In the final scheme, columns at 4.6 m (15.1 ft) centres and 1.1 m (3.6 ft) deep floor edge beams were used to replace the large steel corner columns. As climbing form and table form construction method and efficient construction management are used in this project which make this reinforced concrete structure take no longer construction time than the steel structure. And the most attractive point is that the reinforced concrete scheme can save HK$230 million compared to that of steel structure. Hence the reinforced concrete structure was adopted and Central Plaza is now one of the tallest reinforced concrete buildings in the world.
In the reinforced concrete structure scheme, the core has a similar arrangement to the steel scheme and the wind shear is taken out from the core at the lowest basement level and transferred to the perimeter diaphragm walls. In order to reduce large shear reversals in the core walls in the basement, and at the top of the tower base level, the ground floor, basement levels 1 and 2 and the 5th and 6th floors, the floor slabs and beams are separated horizontally from the core walls.
Another advantage of using reinforced concrete structure is that it is more flexible to cope with changes in structural layout, sizes and height according to the site conditions by using table form system.
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
. With a height of 374 m (1,227 ft), Central Plaza is only surpassed by 2 IFC
International Finance Centre
The International Finance Centre is an integrated commercial development on the waterfront of Hong Kong's Central District....
in Central
Central, Hong Kong
Central is the central business district of Hong Kong. It is located in Central and Western District, on the north shore of Hong Kong Island, across Victoria Harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui, the southernmost point of Kowloon Peninsula...
and the ICC
International Commerce Centre
The International Commerce Centre is a 108 floor, skyscraper completed in 2010 in West Kowloon, Hong Kong. It is a part of the Union Square project built on top of Kowloon Station. The development is owned and jointly developed by MTR Corporation Limited and Sun Hung Kai Properties, Hong...
in West Kowloon
West Kowloon
West Kowloon is a part of Kowloon, Hong Kong situated within the Yau Tsim Mong District. It is bounded by Canton Road to the east, Victoria Harbour to the west and the south, and Jordan Road to the north. Further to the north, the area extends to Tai Kok Tsui to the west of the West Kowloon...
. The building is located at 18 Harbour Road
Harbour Road
Harbour Road is a road in Wan Chai North, Hong Kong.Harbour Road is home to Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong Arts Centre and office buildings, including Central Plaza, Shui On Centre, Sun Hung Kai Centre and Great Eagle Centre.-See also:* List of streets and roads in Hong Kong...
, in Wan Chai
Wan Chai
Wan Chai is a metropolitan area situated at the western part of the Wan Chai District on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island, in Hong Kong. Its other boundaries are Canal Road to the east, Arsenal Street to the west and Bowen Road to the south. The area north of Gloucester Road is often called...
on Hong Kong Island
Hong Kong Island
Hong Kong Island is an island in the southern part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It has a population of 1,289,500 and its population density is 16,390/km², as of 2008...
. It was the tallest building in Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
from 1992 to 1996, until the Shun Hing Square
Shun Hing Square
Shun Hing Square , also named "Di Wang" in Shenzhen, is a 384m tall skyscraper in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China.It is currently the second tallest in Shenzhen, 7th tallest building in mainland China, and the 15th tallest in the world. It was the tallest building in China from its completion...
in Shenzhen
Shenzhen
Shenzhen is a major city in the south of Southern China's Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. The area became China's first—and one of the most successful—Special Economic Zones...
, People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, was built. The 78-storey building was completed in August 1995. The building surpassed the Bank of China Tower as the tallest building in Hong Kong until the completion of 2IFC.
Central Plaza was also the tallest reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...
building in the world, until it was surpassed by CITIC Plaza
CITIC Plaza
CITIC Plaza is a skyscraper built in Tianhe District, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China. Its structural height is 391 m 80 stories including two tall antenna-like spires on the top. Completed in 1997, it is the tallest concrete building in the world...
, Guangzhou
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
. The building uses a triangular floor plan
Floor plan
In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan, or floorplan, is a diagram, usually to scale, showing a view from above of the relationships between rooms, spaces and other physical features at one level of a structure....
. On the top of the tower is a four-bar neon clock that indicates the time by displaying different colours in 15 minute intervals, blinking at the change of the quarter.
An anemometer
Anemometer
An anemometer is a device for measuring wind speed, and is a common weather station instrument. The term is derived from the Greek word anemos, meaning wind, and is used to describe any airspeed measurement instrument used in meteorology or aerodynamics...
is installed on the tip of the building's mast; the anemometer sits at 378 m (1,240 ft) above sea level. The mast has a height of 102 m (335 ft). It also houses the world's highest church inside a skyscraper, Sky City Church.
Design
The ground level public area along with the public sitting out area form an 8,400 m² (90,400 sq ft) landscaped garden with fountain, trees and artificial stone paving. No commercial element is included in the podium. The first level is a public thoroughfare for three pedestrian bridges linking the Mass Transit Railway, the Convention and Exhibition Centre and the China Resource Building. By turning these space to public use, the building got 20% plot ratio more as bonus. The shape of the tower is not truly triangular but with its three corners cut off to provide better internal office spaces.
Triangular shaped floor plan
The building was designed to be in triangular shape because it could provide 20% more of the office area to enjoy the harbour view as compared with the square or rectangular shaped buildings. From an architectural point of view, this arrangement could provide better floor area utilisation, offering an internal column-free office area with a clear depth of 9 to 13.4 metres and an overall usable floor area efficiency of 81%.Nonetheless, the triangular building plan causes the air handling unit (AHU) room in the internal core also to assume a triangular configuration with only limited space. This makes the adoption of a standard AHU not feasible. Furthermore, all air-conditioning ducting, electrical trunking and piping gathered inside the core area had to be squeezed into a very narrow and congested corridor ceiling void.
Super high-rise building
As the building is situated opposite to the HKCEC, the only way to get more sea view for the building and not be obstructed by the neighbouring high-rise buildings is to build it tall enough. However, a tall building brings a lot of difficulties to structural and building services design, for example, excessive system static pressure for water systems, high line voltage drop and long distance of vertical transportation. All these problems can increase the capital cost of the building systems and impair the safety operation of the building.Maximum clear ceiling height
As a general practice, for achieving a clear height of 2.6 to 2.7 m (8.5 to 8.9 ft), a floor-to-floor height of 3.9 to 4.0 m (12.8 to 13.1 ft) would be required. However, because of high windload in Hong Kong for such a super high-rise building, every increase in building height by a metre would increase the structural cost by more than HK$1 million (HK$304,800 per ft). Therefore a comprehensive study was conducted and finally a floor height of 3.6 m (11.8 ft) was adopted. With this issue alone, an estimated construction cost saving for a total of 58 office floors, would be around HK$30 million. Yet at the same time, a maximum ceiling height of 2.6 m (8.5 ft) in office area could still be achieved with careful coordination and dedicated integration.Structural constraints
- The site is a newly reclaimed area with a maximum water table rises to about 2 metres (6.5 ft) below ground level. In the original brief, a 6 storey basement is required, therefore a diaphragm wall design came out.
- The keyword to this project is: time. With a briefing in a limited detail, the structural engineer needed to start work The diaphragm wall design allowed for the basement to be constructed by the top-down method. It allows the superstructure to be constructed at the same time as the basement, thereby removing time consuming basement construction period from the critical path.
- Wind loading is another major design criterion in Hong Kong as it is situated in an area influenced by typhoons. Not only must the structure be able to resist the loads generally and the cladding system and its fixings resist higher local loads, but the building must also perform dynamically in an acceptable manner such that predicted movements lie within acceptable standards of occupant comfort criteria. To ensure that all aspects of the building's performance in strong winds will be acceptable, a detailed wind tunnel study was carried out by Professor Alan Davenport at the BLWT at the UWOUniversity of Western OntarioThe University of Western Ontario is a public research university located in London, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus covers of land, with the Thames River cutting through the eastern portion of the main campus. Western administers its programs through 12 different faculties and...
.
Steel structure vs reinforced concrete
Steel structure is more commonly adopted in high-rise building. In the original scheme, an externally cross-braced framed tube was applied with primary/secondary beams carrying metal decking with reinforced concrete slab. The core was also of steelwork, designed to carry vertical load only. Later after a financial review by the developer, they decided to reduce the height of the superstructure by increasing the size of the floor plate so as to reduce the complex architectural requirements of the tower base which means a highstrength concrete solution became possible.In the final scheme, columns at 4.6 m (15.1 ft) centres and 1.1 m (3.6 ft) deep floor edge beams were used to replace the large steel corner columns. As climbing form and table form construction method and efficient construction management are used in this project which make this reinforced concrete structure take no longer construction time than the steel structure. And the most attractive point is that the reinforced concrete scheme can save HK$230 million compared to that of steel structure. Hence the reinforced concrete structure was adopted and Central Plaza is now one of the tallest reinforced concrete buildings in the world.
In the reinforced concrete structure scheme, the core has a similar arrangement to the steel scheme and the wind shear is taken out from the core at the lowest basement level and transferred to the perimeter diaphragm walls. In order to reduce large shear reversals in the core walls in the basement, and at the top of the tower base level, the ground floor, basement levels 1 and 2 and the 5th and 6th floors, the floor slabs and beams are separated horizontally from the core walls.
Another advantage of using reinforced concrete structure is that it is more flexible to cope with changes in structural layout, sizes and height according to the site conditions by using table form system.
Current tenants
- Kroll Inc.Kroll Inc.Kroll is a risk consultancy firm based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. and established in 1972.- History:Kroll was founded in 1972 by Jules B. Kroll as a consultant to corporate purchasing departments...
(17th Floor) - Zoomlion Hong KongZoomlionZoomlion, or Changsha Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology Development Company Limited, is a Chinese manufacturer of construction machinery and sanitation equipment, listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange...
57th Floor - Sun MicrosystemsSun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
(66th Floor) - Royal Saudi Consulate Of Hong KongDiplomatic missions of Saudi ArabiaThis is a list of diplomatic missions of Saudi Arabia. King Faisal established the General Directory for the Foreign Affairs in 1926. Four years later it was given ministry status, even though it had a staff of fifteen employees in total—and no diplomatic missions abroad...
(Suite 6401, 64th Floor) - AFPAgence France-PresseAgence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...
(62nd Floor) - SiemensSiemensSiemens may refer toSiemens, a German family name carried by generations of telecommunications industrialists, including:* Werner von Siemens , inventor, founder of Siemens AG...
(58th Floor) - ChevronChevron CorporationChevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation headquartered in San Ramon, California, United States and active in more than 180 countries. It is engaged in every aspect of the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including exploration and production; refining,...
(CaltexCaltexCaltex is a petroleum brand name of Chevron Corporation used in more than 60 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, and southern Africa.-History:...
) 41st Floor & 42nd floor - CB Richard EllisCB Richard EllisCBRE Group, Inc. , a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company headquartered in Los Angeles, is the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm . The Company has approximately 31,000 employees , and serves real estate owners, investors and occupiers through more than 300 offices worldwide...
(30th and 34th Floors) - ExxonMobilExxonMobilExxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil, is an American multinational oil and gas corporation. It is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Its headquarters are in Irving, Texas...
(23rd Floor) - Towers WatsonTowers WatsonTowers Watson is a global consulting firm. Its principal lines of business are risk management and human resource consulting. It also has strong actuarial, investment consulting, and reinsurance brokerage practices. The Towers Watson corporate offices are in New York, New York.Towers Watson was...
(21st Floor) - NvidiaNVIDIANvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
(10th Floor) - CNBC AsiaCNBC AsiaCNBC Asia is a business news television channel in Asia. A subsidiary of NBC Universal, it is the Asian service of the Consumer News and Business Channel . Its programmes originate from Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney and has bureaus in Tokyo and Seoul....
(54th Floor) - Daimler AG (59th Floor)
- New Zealand Consulate-General Hong KongDiplomatic missions of New ZealandThis is a list of diplomatic missions of New Zealand, excluding honorary consulates. New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is responsible for nearly fifty embassies and consulates globally. The country is particularly active in the South Pacific, as well as in Asia and South America...
(Suite 6501, 65th Floor) - The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
(60th Floor) - Swiss Reinsurance Company (37th and 67th Floor)
- Consulate-General of Italy in Hong KongDiplomatic missions of ItalyThis is a list of diplomatic missions of Italy, excluding honorary consulates. Italy has a large global network of diplomatic missions. It is the only country in the world to have an embassy on its own territory - the Italian embassy to the Holy See is in Rome....
(Suite 3201, 32nd Floor)
See also
- List of tallest buildings in Hong Kong
- List of buildings and structures in Hong Kong
- List of skyscrapers
- List of tallest freestanding structures in the world
- List of buildings
