Completed in 1985 for the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, this 47-story headquarters by Norman Foster was, at the time, the most expensive building in the world. It stands on Statue Square in Central, on a site the bank has occupied since 1865.
Instead of a central core, the floors hang from giant steel suspension trusses, whose inverted V shapes, spanning double-height levels, mark the outside of the building. The result is an interior free of internal supports. The building was assembled from five modules prefabricated in Britain by a shipbuilder near Glasgow. Lifts stop only every few floors, and escalators link the floors in between, a design meant to create "a village in the sky."
Beneath the tower, the ground floor is an open public plaza, sheltered by the building above. The design was also engineered to withstand typhoons.
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