Architect: Foster and Partners
Lighting Design: Laservision - Director of Design Simon McCartney; Lighting Designer John Rayment

The Foster designed HSBC Headquarters Building emerges from nighttime obscurity beneath a new, dynamic lighting scheme. A key component in the Victoria Harbour Lighting Plan - theatre, architecture and technology converge in a celebration of success, both commercial and architectural.

Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) is one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organizations. HSBC has recently illuminated their Hong Kong headquarters, one of the world’s most internationally significant architectural buildings, in a colorful dress of dynamic light. Launched in January 2004, the HSBC illumination is part of the Victoria Harbour Lighting Plan, a permanent lighting and special effects son et lumiere consisting of the illumination of 18 of Hong Kong’s most prominent buildings.

Sir Norman Foster
Architect of the HSBC Headquarters building is Sir Norman Foster, whose unique work is viewed as one of the world’s outstanding architectural buildings. Completed in 1986, a sensitive period in the former colony´s history, HSBC rose as a statement of confidence. Created without compromise, the brief was for nothing less than ´the best bank building in the world.´

With HSBC, Sir Norman Foster virtually reinvented the office tower, using innovative forms to address the problems of high-rise living. Yet Foster’s attention to detail and craftsmanship was never properly exploited in terms of illumination. Inaccurate sodium lighting left the building obscured in the orange glow of the surrounding night. The opportunities for improvement were therefore great.

Laservision
The Hong Kong Tourism Commission sought to exploit Victoria Harbour, a tourist destination in itself, and engaged Laservision Limited in August 2002 to create a design for the permanent illumination of several significant buildings in Hong Kong and Kowloon, which overlook Victoria Harbour. The study included 23 buildings, 18 of which have currently joined the scheme. Laservision’s task was not only to figure out if it could be done, but how - not to mention how to maneuver through Hong Kong’s often overwhelming political processes.

Laservision´s objectives included the selection of suitable buildings and key viewing areas. A draft design for each chosen structure was completed, taking into account such factors as improved illumination, energy efficiency, enhancement and community pride. HSBC appointed Laservision as lighting designers and project managers for the installation. Laservision’s clients included HSBC and other developers in Hong Kong.

Instrumental in creative and technical consultation, as well as the selection of suitable sites, was Laservision’s Director of Design Simon McCartney, assisted by John Rayment, Lighting Designer of Laservision, and projection specialist Peter Milne.

“HSBC had always intended to implement a new lighting scheme and the Harbour Lighting Plan was the spark for that,” Simon McCartney comments. “The HSBC building didn’t have a lighting scheme worthy of its architecture. They were using sodium vapor lighting which most of Hong Kong is lit by and which has produced a monochromatic vision that tends to make buildings lit that way disappear. Now, even just lit in white, HSBC stands out very strongly because it’s the only white object in an otherwise yellow and gray background.

“John and I took the philosophy that our role was to emphasize the original architectural intent. We were trying to make it look more like itself at nighttime than it does during the day and we succeeded by lighting the exoskeleton and not floodlighting the building, which was what was happening before. Our goal was to give it a better presence – to celebrate and reassert it.”

John Rayment continues, “The aim of the lighting was to celebrate the building, to let it ‘announce’ itself. The resulting illumination is a convergence of theatre, architecture and technology. Today an architect can say: ‘my building is not just lit, it is recreated in light.’”

Image illumination
An additional aim of the lighting scheme was to draw attention to HSBC as a successful business enterprise. Not only has the new illumination dramatically transformed the building aesthetically, but HSBC has successfully profiled itself as the city’s newest center of attention. Endlessly variable lighting façades are becoming an increasingly visible fact in Hong Kong. (A pilot study conducted by Laservision at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre was very successful.)

Urban regeneration
At the same time, the new lighting scheme is designed to pull visitors to the poorer North Side (Tsim Sha Tsui) in a bid to regenerate this area. Tsim Sha Tsui is the best vantage site to view the nightly light show.

HSBC Lighting
Incorporated in the HSBC lighting scheme are 716 intelligent lights including 450 Cyclo color-changing fluorescent fixtures in the glass stairwells, Martin Exterior 600 and 200 fixtures on five levels, eight search lights and over 1 km of LED lighting around the top of the building. Martin Architectural’s Chinese representative, Martin Architectural Hong Kong, supplied the Martin fixtures.

Intelligent lighting is distributed across 6 sections of the building:

1. Vertical Ladder Trusses
2. Exoskeleton: Inner + Outer
3. Refuge Floors
4. Northwest Stairwell
5. Eastern Façade Stairwells
6. Roof – Building Maintenance Units

1. Vertical Ladder Trusses         
Prominent vertical ladder trusses extend up the entire height of the structure. Each single truss is illuminated using 42 Martin Exterior 200s. The Exterior 200 is a programmable 150W, CMY color changer, and at an IP rating of 65 is capable of withstanding Hong Kong’s frequent stormy weather.  “The building’s matt silver external finish provides excellent registration when light is projected onto it,” comments John Rayment.

2. Exoskeleton - Inner + Outer
For the inner exoskeleton area - the unique diagonal bracing that occurs on the main façade - four Martin Exterior 600s with barndoor and snoot (12 degree lens) have been installed at each linear element (total 4 linear elements) for narrow-angle color changing effects at the nodes. The high-tech appearance of the Exterior 600 was an important motive for selecting it, stated Simon McCartney, as it harmonizes well with Foster’s high-tech aesthetic.

For the outer exoskeleton area, the same fixture has been used to give a total of 80 Exterior 600s. “What we’ve done with the building today couldn’t have been done before the advent of the Exterior 600,” Simon states. “In choosing luminaires for the building we considered not only their optical qualities but also the build quality of the light itself because they are mounted on the exterior of the building and it was absolutely crucial to us that we picked a light that was reliable. We chose the 600 for many reasons but quality was the number one concern. Secondly, the light is an attractive fixture and that was a big influence in our decision-making. The architect has meticulously crafted every detail of the HSBC building and the standard of the finish of the building is so high that we had to mimic the quality of what he did, and that came down to a short list of one light.”

3. Refuge Floors
For projection onto the roof of each refuge floor – immediately above three of the exoskeleton areas - Exterior 600s with 100-degree lenses for wide angle illumination are used. Each luminaire is also equipped with an anodized aluminum/stainless steel snoot for manipulation of the light beam. Eight Exterior 600s occupy each of three refuge floors.

4. Northwest Stairwell
Martin Cyclo 03 fluorescent color changers have been installed on each of the forty floors of the Northwest Stairwell - a total of 144. DMX controllable with 0-100% intensity control, the Cyclo 03 is a slim, RGB, luminaire capable of natural daylight shifts and dynamic effects. Surprised by the Cyclos’ performance, Rayment describes them as “sensational” and a “very, very useful light.”

Heat build-up in the glass-clad stairwells, especially unbearable during the summer months, became a non-issue as the Cyclos generate little heat themselves. An LED solution was also tested but Laservision were unhappy with the result.

5. Eastern Façade Stairwells
The Eastern Façade Stairwells incorporate a large number of Cyclo 03s - 336 in total – for illumination of two 40-story glass stairwells.

6. Roof – Building Management Units
Six Exterior 600s with barndoor (12 degree lens) and 12 Exterior 200 are used for roof and BMU decoration. BMUs are the gondolas used to service the outside of the building. Apart from the Martin luminaires, the HSBC project also uses searchlights and LED lighting on the roof.

Victoria Harbour Lighting Plan
Created and implemented by Laservision for the Hong Kong Tourism Commission, the Victoria Harbour Lighting Plan formally launched on January 17, 2004 as the largest lighting project of its type in the world. Out of the 18 buildings involved in the Lighting Plan, the HSBC headquarters and the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts incorporate Martin fixtures.

Called ‘A Symphony of Lights,’ the nightly show represents the largest permanent lighting and special effects show ever attempted. The 17-minute show includes architectural lighting, laser effects and pyrotechnics and runs once or twice nightly. It is accompanied by a sound simulcast, broadcast from viewing locations, including ferries traveling to and from the city.

The Lighting Plan is the key component in Hong Kong’s desire to draw attention to Victoria Harbour and has become an important element in rejuvenating tourism to Hong Kong after the SARS scare in 2003.

Lighting control
Laservision created the city lighting project virtually using the Martin ShowDesigner, a software tool for 3-D lighting design. “We used Martin ShowDesigner for all the visualizations on all the buildings in the Harbour Lighting Plan,” Simon states. “Laservision constructed a CAD model of the city and within that a CAD model of every single building. We had such a big programming job to do and the installations happened so late (in December just prior to opening) that the whole thing had to be done in the virtual world. We could visualize one building at a time but we had never actually seen all of them together until a few days before the opening. The ShowDesigner was uncannily accurate - the tests and the renderings are almost identical to the end result. We couldn’t have done what we did, the way we did it, without it.”

Control systems used to co-ordinate the Lighting Plan are engineered and manufactured by Laservision. Eighteen Digital Data Pumps - designed to co-ordinate and synchronize the usually incompatible elements such as lasers, architectural lighting, surround sound, fountains, aqua screens, large format projection, pyrotechnics and special FX - have been installed into participating buildings. These modules are easily configured and installed with individual modules connected by fiber optics to a central control, within each building. The software used to control and update the lighting is Media-Manager, and the entire network is managed over the Internet. In a unique departure from conventional control system design, there is no central control center for the city. The Data Pumps in each building are completely independent of each other, synchronized by time of day to within a few milliseconds. Program changes can be made from any vantage point in the city via a broadband connection.

Word is that Sir Norman Foster, who had always regretted that HSBC had not been properly lit, approves of the new illumination. “It is good for everybody involved,” says Simon McCartney, “the bank, the architect, the city, the government.”