Parks cover nearly 40 percent of the land in Hong Kong, but you’d never know it from the concrete jungle of Kowloon East.
The Quayside, a sustainable, mixed-use, high-rise development beside a highway, brings some much-needed fresh air to the industrial neighborhood. That’s especially true of CL3 Architects’s biophilic
design for the building’s 884,000-square-foot, four-level podium, which centers around a pair of massive green columns that visually connect various public areas. Comprising umbrella plants and philodendrons encircled by copper-finished stainless-steel ribbons inspired by tree rings, the lush pillars spiral upward from the ground-floor lobby (where a layered plywood reception desk forms the base of one trunk), extend through two retail floors, and end at a garden terrace with a kinetic jogging path that generates electricity. Integrated LEDs and built-in irrigation systems fed partly by rainwater keep the columns verdant. Extensive glazing ensures the double-height lobby and other public spaces are bright and airy; an interior brise-soleil of extruded aluminum controls solar heat. With sophisticated air filtration systems and all those pollutant-reducing plants, the Quayside offers 2020’s hottest amenity: a safe place to breathe.
Project Team: William Lim; Clinton Tsoi; Howard Man.
> See the full list of winners and honorees from Best of Year 2020
