Innovative laminated-in facade fittings and glass stair on a bridge building over a busy highway in Hong Kong, dealing with large building movements.
The IFC HK store is located in the Central area of Hong Kong and is Apple’s first entry into this market. The store is part of the IFC Mall and is suspended 11 metres above Man Cheung St, the building bridging the street with a 40-metre span.
Eckersley O’Callaghan was responsible for the nine-metre-tall glass facade, glass spiral stair, glass balustrades and internal mall storefront.
The principle challenges lay in the glass facade. It represented a departure from a bolted glass connection to a new type of encapsulated fitting where the metalwork is bonded into the body of the glass. This led to no visible bolted connections between glass elements and enhanced the minimal appearance of the facade.
The facade had to be engineered to resist the extremely high wind loads that Hong Kong sees during typhoon season. Both the facade and the other glass elements also had to accommodate the significant deflections of the bridge structure.
The proposals lay well outside the conventions of facade and glass engineering in Hong Kong and the strict local construction guidelines led to long negotiations with the building authorities during the permitting process. Eckersley O’Callaghan provided extensive justification of the design, through analysis and through both large and small-scale performance tests.
