Bank of China Tower
Interesting facts
- Murray House, the colonial building that once stood on the site, was taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt in Stanley on the south side of the island.
- The bank hoped to finish the tower on 8 August 1988, a date packed with lucky eights, but delays pushed completion to 1990.
- Its entire weight is carried down to just four steel corner columns by the triangular trusses of the frame.
- Structural engineer Leslie E. Robertson, who worked with Pei on the tower, had earlier engineered the Twin Towers of New York's original World Trade Center.
- It was the only major Hong Kong building of its era to skip consulting feng shui masters before construction, and Pei toned down some X shapes before building began.
- Reportedly, the neighbouring Government House answered the tower's blade-like edges by planting willow trees on the side facing it.
- According to the bank, the polished granite of the base was meant to evoke the Great Wall, while the shaft rises like bamboo.
- The government sold the site in 1982 for about half what a comparable nearby plot fetched, and the deal drew accusations of favouritism.
- A press launch to show off the building's interiors, set for 24 May 1989, was cancelled as the student protests in Beijing escalated.
- Through digital editing, the tower appeared in Star Trek: Voyager as the exterior of Starfleet's Communications Research Center.
Why it is worth it
On a crowded waterfront of towers, the Bank of China Tower is the one that looks cut from crystal. Designed by I. M. Pei and completed in 1990, it rises at 1 Garden Road in Central, on the plot once occupied by the colonial Murray House. Pei had a personal tie to the client — his father had been a manager of the Bank of China — and he answered the commission with an image drawn from Chinese painting: a stalk of bamboo, growing section by section towards the light.
The building is a square in plan, divided diagonally into four triangular shafts. As the tower climbs, the shafts end one after another at different heights, so that each face changes profile and only a single triangular prism reaches the top. The result is a silhouette that shifts as you walk around it, from a slender blade to a stepped cluster of glass planes. The great X-braces of the structure are shown openly on the glass facade as a pattern of diamonds; with the engineer Leslie E. Robertson, Pei built it as the first high-rise with a composite space frame, a structure that is itself the architecture.
When it opened it was 315 m to the roof and 367.4 m to the tip of its masts, with 72 floors above ground — the tallest building in Hong Kong and in Asia until 1992, and the first outside the United States to pass the 1,000-foot mark. It also became a textbook case of feng shui debate: the sharp angles and the X motifs were read by some as blades pointed at neighbours and as marks of negation, and the tower earned a nickname meaning "the knife". The crystalline form stayed, and it remains one of the most recognisable shapes on Victoria Harbour, best seen at night from Tsim Sha Tsui or from the Peak, where its lit diagonals stand out from everything around it.
Getting there
The tower is in Central on Hong Kong Island, about 1 km from Wan Chai. The nearest MTR station is Central; exit J2 leads through Chater Garden towards Garden Road. Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) is about 26 km away. From the mainland side, Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport (SZX) is about 54 km away. The building is a working bank headquarters; the lobby and the small landscaped gardens around the base can be seen from the street.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Peak Tram 1.0 km · funicular
- Victoria Peak 1.9 km · scenic-viewpoint
- High Island Reservoir 22.2 km · rock-formation
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Bank of China Tower is a skyscraper located in Central, Hong Kong. Located at 1 Garden Road on Hong Kong Island, the tower houses the headquarters of the Bank of China Limited. One of the most recognisable landmarks in Hong Kong, the building is notable for its distinct shape and design, consisting of triangular frameworks covered by glass curtain walls.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
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