High Tech Magazine

A C H I T E C T U R E

ENGLAND ARCHITECT Sir. Nornam Foster Born 1 June 1935 PAG 5

CHINA ARCHITECT James Law JP Born in Hong Kong PAG 5

The Architecture who

CHALLENGE the construction world

HIGH TECH What’s

High-tech architecture, also known as Structural Expressionism, is a type of Late Modern architectural style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture grew from the modernist style, utilizing new advances in technology and building materials.

It emphasizes transparency in design and construction, seeking to communicate the underlying structure and function of a building throughout its interior and exterior. High-tech architecture makes extensive use of steel, glass, and concrete, as these materials were becoming more advanced and available in a wider variety of forms at the time the style was developing.

High-tech architecture focuses on creating adaptable buildings through choice of materials, internal structural elements, and programmatic design. It seeks to avoid links to the past, and as such eschews building materials commonly used in older

styles of architecture. Common elements include hanging or overhanging floors, a lack of internal load-bearing walls, and reconfigurable spaces. Some buildings incorporate prominent, bright colors in an attempt to evoke the sense of a drawing or diagram.High-tech utilizes a focus on factory aesthetics and a large central space serviced by many smaller maintenance areas to evoke a feeling of openness, honesty, and transparency.

Early high-tech buildings were referred to by historian Reyner Banham as “serviced sheds” due to their exposure of mechanical services in addition to the structure. Most of these early examples used exposed structural steel as their material of choice. As hollow structural sections had only become widely available in the early 1970s, high-tech architecture saw much experimentation with this material.

The style’s premier practitioners include the following: Bruce Graham, Fazlur Rahman Khan, Minoru Yamasaki, Sir Norman Foster, Sir Richard Rogers, Sir Michael Hopkins, Renzo Piano, and Santiago Calatrava.

ARCHITECT

JAMES LAW CYBERTECTURE James Law JP, was born in Hong Kong to a hard working humble lower class family. At age of 7 years old, James was inspired by the movie “The Fountainhead” to become an architect. ames was accepted into the Bartlett School of Architecture in London where he was mentored by Peter Cook, and apprenticed under Itsuko Hasegawa in Tokyo.James has started the Cybertecture Academy to nurture a new generation of designers from a young age, and Cybertecture for Humanity Foundation to alleviate suffering in the world through design.

THE EGG C Y B E R T E C T U R E

The Cybertecture Egg is a 13-story commercial building located in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Architect James Law designed the Cybertecture Egg along with Ove Arup’s building systems and engineering firm.The building was designed with sustainability in mind and has 33,000 sqm of office space, an elevated garden, and three levels of basement with 400 parking spaces, all in about 15% less space than a traditional office building.

The structure of the Cybertecture Egg uses a diagrid exoskeleton, which forms a rigid structural system and allows it to be built with less building material than a traditional orthogonal building.The building will use wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels to generate onsite electricity.There is also a greywater r e c y - cling system

ARCHITECT

SIR NORMAN FOSTER

Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM, RA, HonFREng (born 1 June 1935) is an English architect whose company, Foster + Partners, maintains an international design practice. He is the President of the Norman Foster Foundation. The Norman Foster Foundation promotes interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects, designers and urbanists to anticipate the future. The foundation, which opened in June 2017, is based in Madrid and operates globally.

He is one of the most prolific British architects of his generation. In 1999, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture.

The 30 st Mary Axe

30 St Mary Axe (known previously as the Swiss Re Building), informally known as The Gherkin, is a commercial skyscraper in London’s primary financial district, the City of London. It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004.

[10] With 41 floors, it is 180 metres (591 ft) tall[3] and stands on the former sites of the Baltic Exchange and Chamber of Shipping, which were extensively damaged in 1992 in the Baltic Exchange bombing by a device placed by the Provisional IRA in St Mary Axe, a narrow street leading north from Leadenhall Street.

HSBC BUILDING

HSBC Main Building is a headquarters building of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which is today a wholly owned subsidiary of London-based HSBC Holdings. It is located on the southern side of Statue Square near the location of the old City Hall, Hong Kong (built in 1869, demolished in 1933). The previous HSBC building was built in 1935 and pulled down to make way for the current building. The address remains as 1 Queen’s Road Central (the north facing side of the building was served by Des Voeux Road, which was the seashore, making Queen’s Road the main entrance, in contrast to the current primary access coming from Des Voeux