Making a mark

Urban planning

Building business and shaping cities

  • 1 Closer connectivity with the mainland is cementing Hong Kong’s position as the main commercial gateway in and out of China
  • 2 Asia’s continuing urbanisation provides plenty of demand for developers who know how to design and build high-density cities
  • 3 Hong Kong is exporting infrastructure expertise as mainland China’s next phase emphasises efficiency, sustainability and liveability

architecture

Keith Griffiths

Chair, Aedas

Keith Griffiths first tasted life at the top of Hong Kong’s Mandarin Oriental at the age of 29: the UK architect had been sent out by Norman Foster to work on the HSBC building that can now be viewed through the window. Since then, as Griffiths’ own business has flourished, the 64-year-old founder and chairman of Aedas – which is now one of the world’s largest architecture firms – has grown more accustomed to dining on the 26th floor.

For the past decade, chef Pierre Gagnaire has been serving Gallic cuisine with a modern twist. Griffiths’ favourite four-dish appetiser, Perfume of the Earth, includes foie gras served on a bed of thyme and hay from France. “When they take off the lid it feels like you are walking through a forest,” he says.

Relocating to Hong Kong has clearly been good for Griffiths. Gazing out of the Mandarin Oriental’s wrap around windows provides a full-scale diorama of his architectural career to date. Griffiths ticks off just some of the glass towers, podiums and malls that he has had a hand in before his eyes land on the West Kowloon Station on the other side of Victoria Harbour. The connection with mainland China’s vast high-speed rail network, which opened last year, was designed by Aedas’s lead designer Andrew Bromberg.

Aedas has designed airports and rail infrastructure right across Asia and the Middle East; about 60 per cent of current projects are based in greater China. At home in Hong Kong, Aedas jointly designed, with Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners, the boundary-crossing facility for Hong Kong’s huge sea bridge to Zhuhai and Macau. Griffiths led the project alongside his friend Richard Paul – a professional reunion for the former colleagues who last worked together under Foster on the HSBC building.

Griffiths turns 65 in October but he shows no signs of retiring. In fact, a few years ago he rewrote his own mandatory retirement clause so that he could keep working. “Architects get better with age,” he says, referring as supporting evidence to the octogenarian duo of Rogers and Foster.

 
Esquel Integral
 

Architecture

Bryant Lu

Vice-chairman, Ronald Lu & Partners

At Ronald Lu & Partners, one of Hong Kong’s largest architecture firms, mainland China accounts for 40 per cent of commissions. As China continues to urbanise, the firm is working with local developers to export the city’s high-density rail, retail and residential model of urban planning.


1 – Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai Boundary Control Point

Hong Kong’s seventh land crossing with mainland China is due for completion this year. RL&P designed the passenger terminal building with the Shenzhen government. “It signifies the seamless integration between mainland China and Hong Kong,” says Lu. The new crossing will make it easier for cars and container lorries to transfer to southeast China, accessing the nearby port of Yan Tian and coastal cities such as Xiamen.


2 – Esquel Integral, Guilin

Esquel, the world’s largest woven-shirt maker, is dedicated to building greener production facilities in southern China. RL&P is designing a factory for the manufacturer in Guilin, due to open in 2020 (pictured, above). The facility has been designed for factory workers of the future. “Esquel wants to showcase what industry 4.0 in China will look like,” says Lu.


3 – CTF Finance Centre, Wuhan

A 450-metre-tall tower is one of several projects Lu is working on in Wuhan, a rapidly growing second-tier city in China. The CTF Finance Centre, opening in 2025 (pictured, below), will have two train stations, a carpark connecting six city blocks and pedestrian tree bridges. Says Lu, “Hong Kong knows how to deal with layers of transport in an interconnected city.”

CTF Finance Centre