The Hong Kong Institute of Architects (HKIA) is proud to announce the big success with its 55th Anniversary Conference, which is held today at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. As one of the signature celebrations of the 55th anniversary program, the Conference was received with great enthusiasm among industrial professionals from Hong Kong and beyond and also related government bodies.

The Organizing Committee of the HKIA 55th Anniversary Conference was much honored to have invited Mr. Donald TSANG Yam-kuen, GBS, GBM, Chief Executive of the HKSAR Government, as Guest of Honor of the Conference. Mrs. Carrie LAM CHENG Yuet-ngor, GBS, JP, Secretary for Development, Development Bureau of the HKSAR Government, and Ms Eva CHENG, GBS, JP, Secretary for Transport and Housing Bureau of the HKSAR Government, have also presented their keynote speeches in the morning session and afternoon session respectively and shared their views on the future development of Hong Kong as an important city in the globe.

Other speakers invited are all renowned architects, engineers, academia, politicians from Hong Kong, Mainland China and overseas. Plenary sessions were also hosted to cover infrastructure, transport and the high-density cum high-rise development in Megalopolis.

With all the interesting topics covered, today’s Conference has attracted over 600 architects, legislators, government officials, developers, consultants, contractors and other stakeholders to attend.

Mr. Dominic Lam, President of HKIA, commented, “Hong Kong is a unique city with high density development and full of high-rise buildings. We have to study its merit and problems which will help many other cities in the world of plan for their urbanization development in future.”

Why Megalopolis and Architecture?
Megalopolis is a densely populated urban region embracing one or more very large cities or metropolises. Megalopolis evokes daunting size, a vast scale of infrastructure, organization and governance of an unprecedented order. Academics, architects, planners, city developers and governance designers have explored the concept and the way in which accepted ideas of the city and urban hierarchy needs to be re-conceptualised for a well-balanced living environment in the future.

In today’s context, with economic considerations to the fore, Megalopolis becomes manifest with the joining of a number of independent cities through fast transport and electronic systems. The successful linking and merging of such systems has sparked current concerns with the need to house an increasing proportion of the population who will be moving from the country side to the city to take advantage of employment and the convenience of urban living.

Under the 12th Five-year Plan for China, Hong Kong will play a significant role in the development of the Pearl River Delta region. With the recent development of cross-boundary facilities and infrastructure, Hong Kong would be better connected with the Pearl River Delta and with the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Quality Living Area. The Hong Kong-Pearl River Delta region will surely develop into a Megalopolis in the 21st century.

The 55th Anniversary Conference aimed to explore the development of Megalopolis and its components – the architecture with particular reference to Hong Kong and Pearl River Delta region and other similar developments in the world.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) today announced that Mr Kenneth Kwan is elected as Chairman of its Hong Kong Board for one year term of office with immediate effect.

Mr Kwan FRICS, FHKIS, HKIAC Accredited Mediator, RPS(QS), RCE(PRC) is an experienced quantity surveyor. He has been a Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors since 1989. He joined Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB), a global property and construction service provider, in 1986 and became a Director in 2001. He has extensive experience in different types of projects in both public and private sectors in Hong Kong, and projects in Macau, mainland China and a few other cities in the world.

Mr Kwan also promotes the QS practice in different occasions by giving lectures to the students of the local Universities, to the Architects and to the other professionals. He has delivered public speeches on the QS Profession Practice to mainland China professionals in the construction field as well.

Currently, apart from being the Chairman of the RICS Hong Kong Board, Mr Kwan is also the Chairman of the Asia QS and Construction Professional Group Board of the RICS.

Mr Kenneth Kwan, the new Chairman of RICS Hong Kong, said, “I am honoured to be the Chairman of the RICS Hong Kong Board which gives me a better opportunity to serve the members. Together with the Board and the support of the RICS Hong Kong office, I believe we can make RICS even stronger and better.”

The newly elected office bearers and members of Hong Kong Board for year 2011/2012 are as follows:

Chairman: Mr Kenneth Kwan
Vice Chairman: Mr Edward Au
Hon. Secretary: Mr David Edwards
Hon. Treasurer: Mr H K Yu
Elected Members:
(in alphabetical by last names) Mr Ben Chong
Mr David Faulkner
Dr Daniel Ho
Mr Simon Kwok
Prof Andrew YT Leung
Mr Gary Man
Mr Kenneth Pang
Mr Albert So
Mr David Tse
Mr KK Wong (Immediate Past Chairman)
Mr Reeves Yan

28 November 2011, Shanghai – Real estate services provider Colliers International’s Asia Pacific Office Market Overview Q3 2011 indicated robust leasing demand drove Shanghai’s prime office average rent up 14.1% Y-o-Y to RMB8 / sq m / day, which rose to ninth place from eleventh in Q2 in Asia Pacific.  

The report also showed that Shanghai was ranked the world’s sixth financial center in the Xinhua-Dow Jones International Financial Centers Development Index in 2011, moving up two positions from 2010.

Continued growth of local enterprises in Asia Pacific is anticipated to keep the region’s overall office demand stable in the near term, despite the deepening sovereign debt crisis in Europe and the slowdown of China’s overall growth pace, according to Colliers International’s Asia Pacific Office Market Overview 3Q 2011.

In 3Q 2011, office leasing demand from multi-national corporations slowed due to the lack-luster growth prospects around the globe. However, local enterprises in Asia Pacific continued aggressive expansion plans resulting in mixed and uneven rental trends in the region during 3Q 2011. This is largely reflected in the average Greater China office rental growth of 4.5% quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q) which out-paced the region’s overall growth of a mere1.3%.

Lina Wong, Managing Director of East and Southwest China and China Investment Services at Colliers International, said, “Despite the impact from European debt crisis, the market is growing in China, though at a slower pace. Several upcoming office projects in Shanghai have achieved high pre-lease occupancy rates during 3Q 2011. Rental and capital values are expected to increase against the backdrop of the generally optimistic business outlook for Shanghai and China as a whole.  Demand for office space from luxury brands is particularly strong, and Colliers has recently assisted TOD’S group, the Italian leather goods luxury brand, to lease a 1,490-sqm new office in Wheelock Square in Jing’An district in Shanghai.”

Sales transaction activity in Asia Pacific was relatively quiet. Around the region, the Colliers report noted the lack of en-bloc office sales transaction in Beijing in 3Q 2011, while the office sales transaction volume plummeted almost 70% in Hong Kong. However, on the flip side, other individual markets in the region, underpinned by local private investors’ buying interest, registered exceptionally encouraging sales volume in the quarter. They included Guangzhou in which a number of office projects in Pearl River New City were launched, and Brisbane where strong sales volume of large and prime assets was recorded.

“Looking forward, the continued positive support from sustained capital inflows and private consumption in Asia Pacific is anticipated to hold steady the region’s overall office demand. In the near term, office rents and prices are anticipated to move flatly, while sales volumes will be reduced in most markets in the region except China that will see continued demand from local investors.” Wong added.

Source: Colliers International

The Hong Kong Design Institute Building has won its architect several awards but its concept is a simple as a blank sheet of paper.

Four thousand students will decend on Tsuen Wan in Hong kong as the new design centre.  Their centre for learning is an architecturally award winning building, the commission of which was also the subject of a design competition of 162 teams from 23 countries. The winning design is based around the concept of a blank piece of paper, held aloft on four fingers of a hand.  

Rather than the usual approach of creating a poduim sunk beneath high-rise towers, in the HKDI the image is inverted with a ‘floating poduim’ sitting several stories up, creating an umbrella of the space beneath for exhibitions, events and, importantly for Hong Kong, public space. The building is not an obstacle, instead it is a natural gathereing point and thoroughfare for people, ideas and the breeze.

Architect Thomas Coldefy of Coldefy and Associates, a firm started by Thomas’  father in 1984, “has a passion to help introduce low carbon living to Asia Pacific”. As such despite the brief not mentioning any environmental requirements, he was keen to develop his programme to be as green as possible.  He belives that part of an architect’s duty is to educate, inform and influence clients, particularly in low-tech green solutions.  

Coldefy, thingks that the low tech slutions are often overlooked because many of the initial ‘green buildings’ were commercial endevours with big budgets. In these cases, the fundamental building design stayed the same, but expensive high-tech features were added to mitigate environmental impact. For example, he states, the architect deigns a fully glazed building, requiring increased energy consumption for air-conditioning. So the ‘green’ solution was to add double glazing, rather than assessing the need for a fully glazed building on that site. As such Coldefy is not interested in chasing the traditional building certifications such as LEED or BREAM, but searches instead for solutions adapted to the site and purpose.

Working green design
While HKID’s classic materials of glass steel and concrete are hardly green per se, the periferal steel trellis structural system has reduced the number of columns and walls required thus reducing the usage of construction materials all the while channelling natural breezes into the interior, to regulate temperature. Underneath, Hong Kong’s longest escalator of 60 m “tethers” the podium to the ground and shuttles students into the sky of ideas in the podium above.

While accepting that cultural and public building commissions give greater opportunity to “express creatively”, at the Coldefy studio, they teach as part of the comapny culture an ethos of design and space that is both sustainable and uniquely creative whatever the remit.  Setting up a permanent practice in Hong Kong the group want to bring this approach to further commissions in Asia. Even if it means sometimes turning down work.”If you want 300 “Venetian style” villas”, says Coldefy, “We cant help you”.

“What makes buildings exciting is a change of scale and space” he says. However even in cases where teh brief is not as expansive he tries to bring his own ideas. He describes the design institute as a “quite fantastic client” as the changes and restrictions on design were of a moderate and practical nature. The purpose of education is to “elevate the mind” says Coldefy balancing a blank sheet of paper on the tips of his fingers and raising it up. And with the purity of vision that the team were able to achieve, the architecture, he believes, assists in that.