PACIFIC PLACE - Hongkong

Pacific Place, in the heart of the central district of Hong Kong, comprises four mixed-use towers with hotel, offices and serviced apartments atop a shopping mall. It was constructed by Swire Properties in the late 1980’s with the architects Wong and Ouyang, and became an icon of modern shopping and Hong Kong urban culture.

Swire Properties engaged the London-based designer, Thomas Heatherwick, to modernise the mall and adapt it to current fashion trends in response to public demand. Internal facilities were upgraded and a new restaurant was created at vehicle-access level. The design by Heatherwick Studio arranges sinuous vertical ribbons as terraces wrapping around the restaurant columns, and revealing a central void for a skylight.

HDA were brought in as specialist design consultants to Swire Properties to provide conceptual and technical design assistance to the Heatherwick Studio team. HDA proposed a construction concept using steel ribbons to constite a shell structure for the roof and an ETFE pillow for the central skylight. Our work involved structural

analysis and detail development of all structural and

glazing components, including the restaurant’s envelope, the long canopy, a footbridge and a skylight.
The canopy, designed but not built, extended the theme of steel ribbons as structural members that support a glass cover, in a sinuous movement following the curvilinear drive of Wong & Oyuang’s initial plan.