Reshaping Hong Kong’s skyline with innovations in façades

The skyline of the city is touted amongst the best across the globe and for valid reasons. With the skyline filled with high rise buildings, the city certainly boasts of state of the art technologies being applied in the construction.

Hong Kong saw the spike in highrise construction at the very beginning of the new millennium. As a major exporter of construction services to the mainland Chinese region, Hong Kong construction industry has been a leader in the genre and has been looked upon for delivery of novel projects.

Since, power consumption by the buildings in Hong Kong amounts to about 89 percent of the total power consumed, in turn owing up to 60 percent of the emissions in Hong Kong, it does call for serious environmentally responsive and energy efficient measures to be taken for these power guzzling units.

A very innate desire to move towards zero carbon buildings has had Hong Kong’s construction industry working on innovative methods to reduce its adverse effects of on the environment.

Building façades do play a highly important role in turning the buildings environment-friendly and energy efficient. With technologies revolving around variable heat insulation, solar thermal energy, interactive façades etc, all buildings are all set to play their part in a decreased carbon footprint in a broader perspective.

After creating highly focused platforms through its 28 editions successfully, Zak Group is organising the first edition of Zak World of Façades conference in the Greater China region in Hong Kong.

The conference is scheduled to be held on 18th May at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. The platform is dedicated to the construction and façade industry stakeholders with a purpose of creating opportunities for discussions, deliberations and exchanging business opportunities.

At the event, newer dimensions, innovations and unconventional trends of the industry within the contours of the country in addition to the iconic novel ideas across the globe shall be put forth on the table to be discussed upon.

The conference programme includes topics including that on future of façades, Gross Floor Area (GFA) in HK and its effects on façade design, sustainable & green façade design considerations, sustainable coating solutions, trends in complex geometries, vertical joints fire protection, etc.

There are also project case studies on the Morpheus Hotel in Macao designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and engineered by BuroHappold, the 530m tall Tianjin CTF tower by SOM & Ronald Lu and Partners and more.

The special keynote will be delivered by Forth Bagley from Kohn Pedersen Fox, New York office on the CTF Tower Guangzhou, which is a 530m tall iconic building with the façade made out of white glazed terracotta.

Opinions from leading architects, clients, façade consultants, contractors, etc will be debated upon and a solution will be presented to comply with the current and proposed standards.

Some of the key firms presenting and debating in this event would be Ronald Lu & Partners, Aedas, Meinhardt Façade, BuroHappold, Farrells, Hong Kong Housing Department, P&T Group, Arup, HS+A, Inhabit Group, ALT Cladding, Gammon Engineering, WSP Group, Arquitectonica and more.

The principal partner of this event is Schüco Greater China. Dr Winfried Heusler of Schüco International will make his presentation on sustainable façades for (sub) tropical regions and the benefits of Schüco systems in these regions.

Be a part of the Zak World of Façades conference, a unique knowledge sharing platform encouraging ideas and innovation and gain industry insights through the thought leaders and influencers coupled with business opportunities with the leading players across the façade value chain.

Visit www.facades.hk for the event details.

About Zak World of Façades

Zak World of Façades (www.zakworldoffacades.com) is an International conference series on façade design & engineering having attracted over 8900 delegates across its 28 completed editions. The conference is currently being organised in 11 countries in the Middle East (UAE, Qatar, Kuwait & Saudi Arabia), South Asia (India & Sri Lanka), South East Asia (Singapore & Indonesia), Greater China (Hong Kong) & the United Kingdom. The event attracts senior architects, developers, façade consultants, PMCs, façade contractors along with key consultants & decision makers.