Victoria Harbour as seen from Kowloon. The "Hong Kong-King Kong" title is a simple play with words as I like the sound and rythm, perhaps also association of King Kong and hi-rise climbing albeit other side of the world :)
“In the case of my working experience in Hong Kong, I have always stayed in the same hotel in Mong Kong. The place has always reminded me of Le Corbusier’s buildings and his writings while travelling on cruise liners and thinking of prefabrication and 'home as a machine for living'(1923), the hotel is reminiscent to the Marseille United’Habitation but without its rooftop running track, and beneath it there is a rail track rather than a car park. The site is of some 250 metres long and only 50 metres wide, wedged in between a built-up area and a (former) green strip – a buffer zone for the rail tracks. Its podium is an over site development for retail space and also an entrance to the Mong Kok East MTR metro station. The building structure spans across the railway track and the tower is built over a purposely-built reinforced concrete deck. The tower is 20 storeys high, plus the podium levels which makes up the footprint. The complex is one of the few examples of what Le Corbusier referred as the anti-Skyscraper”.
Extract from Learning from Hong Kong, Paper presented at the Architectural Science Association (Aranda-Mena, et.al 2018).
Until next time HK!
Guillermo Aranda-Mena Ⓒ2023
Comments