First thing that came into our minds about Hongkong to visit were Norman Foster's Hongkong Bank and IM Pei's Bank of China. And the simple way to access Hongkong island where they located from our hotel in Kowloon was via MTR subway. The station, as well as the train cabin was designed to be simple, clean, and very functional, as people tends to go very fast and in a large numbers to the business district. With hidden indirect lightings reflected from the curved metal ceiling, the station was lit sufficiently along with many other advertising neon-boxes that ends at medium speed escalator to the surface.
As we came out from Central station, whereas those two icons are closely located, we've been struck by how those highrise buildings arises from the crowded streets and multi level contours. The shocking feeling was slightly reduced by the open plaza in front of the giant structures of Foster's Hongkong Bank (HB). But the urge for getting to the office in time would lead people to cross the streets, stay at the bus/tram stops, and even run to the nearest escalators or building entrances. Unless we pause, sit and look up, we wouldn't be able to sense the height and the whole structure of all the surrounding highrises....luckily we were tourists.
The HB's ground level is slightly sloped and open for public access, where they can easily cross the other streets through the building to another staircases and buildings. This open area is guarded by the 2 lions at the entrance, accented by the presence of 2 escalators toward the office above with real security guards. We really enjoyed the airflow there, before we continue to the other side of the street where the highrise shades most of these areas. After some shots, we finally realize how photogenic this HB was, as we didn't need to take difficult angles to get a perfect shot of this building.
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