Foster in Hong Kong

Whilst in Hong Kong to oversee our eleventh edition of Art Central (March 2026), I was fortunate enough to be staying in The Murray Hotel, a recent Foster + Partners project. My room afforded an excellent view of what is perhaps the practices finest building. 

It is 40 years since Sir Norman Foster completed the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Central, interestingly the same year that The Lloyds building by Richard Rogers was completed. Both buildings are iconic financial institutions at the commercial heart of their respective cities.  Whilst there are similarities, for example a central atrium space with services pushed to the edges, the careful manipulation of daylight, and a degree of complexity that deserted their later buildings, there are fundamental differences.

Paradoxically, Lloyds has a rather negative relationship to the street, there is little in the way of public space, and the building effectively has a moat around it. HSBC on the other hand maximises the public space at ground level and offers it back to the city.

This is in steep contrast to their breakthrough buildings ten years earlier.  Whilst HSBC is open and permeable, Willis Faber Dumas in Ipswich is an internalised bastion behind its black curtain wall. In Paris, Piano and Rogers created a large public space with a building that animates it. The Pompidou certainly established a language that would become synonymous with Richard Rogers for many years to come.  

In Hong Kong, it is almost as if Foster reinterpreted the idea of public realm from the Pompidou and synthesised it into the HSBC building. And it is so much better for it, the open space beneath the tower allows views into the banking hall above. The escalators leading to the customer spaces at the base of the atrium are grand gestures that relate the building to its historic location, the topography of the city and the people of Hong Kong. HSBC is perhaps the most mannered hi-tec building of Fosters burgeoning career, and his most sophisticated piece of city making.

The building is a sculpted form of four “towers” of differing heights, which adds to the complexity of the skyline and grain of the city. It’s many innovations include light scoops and grouped stacks of space linked with escalators. The floor plates are clean and efficient; the servant spaces being pushed to the East and West elevations.

Hong Kong is an ever-changing city, the old Bank of China building, Harry Siedler’s Hong Kong Club and HSBC are elegant guests around Statue Square.  In contrast, IM Pei’s angular Bank of China Tower and Zaha Hadid’s recent Henderson building, feel like brash influencers at a refined party.

The space beneath Foster’s tower graphically demonstrates how Hong Kong has changed, markers on the ground indicate the 19^th century shorelines. Sadly, as Hong Kong continually changes the Sunday picnics of the 300,000 chattering domestic workers have been moved on. This was a sight to behold, and a wonderful social takeover of the commercial space of the city.