Arup Lends Engineering Experience to Opus Hong Kong
Opus Hong Kong is a twelve-storey residential building overlooking Victoria Harbour, conceived by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry.
High on the hillside of Stubbs Road on Hong Kong Island, the development is Gehry’s first residential project in Asia. The architectural design of the tower is based on a floor footprint resembling Hong Kong’s city flower, the Bauhinia. External columns resembling bamboo shoots swaying in the wind surround the building.
Arup provided structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, public health engineering, civil engineering, building physics and wind engineering for the development.
A sculptural structure
Arup moulded the architectural concept of ‘swaying reeds’ into a buildable design using slender, twisting columns, set away from the façade, to enhance and interact with the sea view. The choice of a column-free flat slab structural floor system provided the client with maximum flexibility for future room layouts. Because of the free form design of floor plates and “rotating floor” relative to the next floor, each unit is of unique design.
Highest level of sustainability and human comfort
We carried out comprehensive analyses to enhance the buildings environmental performance and reduce annual electricity consumption by 31%. OPUS HONG KONG adopts natural ventilation and lighting, energy efficient water pumping, a lift power re-generation system to capture energy generated by downward loads, a motion detection CCTV system, and a lighting sensor system. Additionally there are full electrical provisions to promote the use of battery electric vehicles in all parking spaces.
