Hong Kong’s extreme density and high real-estate prices are pushing mixed-use developers to build taller than ever. With iSQUARE, a 53,000-square-meter retail/dining/entertainment complex, Rocco S.K. Yim used lively architecture to make the journey to a “sky lobby” 26 meters above the street, and from there to an iMAX theater and “tower of restaurants” -- an asset rather than a liability.
"In traditional Chinese architecture, there's a horizontal spatial sequence, one courtyard to another to another,' explains Yim, who founded Rocco Design Architects in Hong Kong in 1982. At iSQUARE, 'we tried to achieve the same thing, but vertically,' says Yim. That meant creating a series of interior spaces that are desirable destinations, in part for their city and Victoria Harbor views. Unlike the kind of mall that only looks inward, iSQUARE 'creates visual contact with the city at various levels," says Yim.
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