Designed by Aedas, The Forum in Hong Kong, Renhe Spring Residential Development in Chengdu, China, and Mongkok Residence in Hong Kong were named Commercial and Mixed-use Architect of the Year (Hong Kong), Residential Architect of the Year (Greater China) and Future Projects Architect of the Year respectively at this year’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) Chivas 18 Architecture and Design Awards.
The Forum redevelopment is a holistic design, integrating a new office building, sculpture park and events plaza and thereby revitalising the entire Exchange Square development. The compact and exquisitely detailed new building opens up the site visually and physically, creating a significant public space designed as a series of stone platforms linked with water features and planting. The design by Keith Griffiths is inspired by precious gems. The perfect cube of the building is dramatically tilted to create a grand entrance from the plaza. The geometry of the tilted plane is resolved into the elegant diamond cut façade of the building. As a Grade-A office in the heart of the Central district, the column-free office interior with its 2.9m of floor-to-ceiling space evokes a tailor-made environment with ample natural daylight from all elevations. Located in Chengdu, Renhe Spring Residential Development is part of a mixed-used project. The entrance to the development is defined by a colonnade which leads to a viewing deck. Designed by Project Design Director Cary Lau, there is a central landscaped area serving as a picturesque backdrop for the development. The design of Mongkok Residence drew inspirations from the city’s post-war structures and sets an excellent example of contemporary interpretation of traditional architecture. In the early post-war years, it was common to create illegal iron balconies for residential units in Mongkok, a hyperdense neighbourhood in Hong Kong, to acquire maximum view. Also designed by Cary Lau, he reinterpreted these structures in a modern way, using irregular protrusions to create unobstructed views for each apartment. SCMP Chivas 18 Architecture and Design Awards is organised to commemorate the unique ingenuity of blending art and science to produce architectural masterpieces.
