Term Papers on Where I Am…@#%*

Term Paper Title	Where I Am…@#%*
# of Words	2183
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	8.73

Where I am…@#%*

…Bank of China Tower

Bank of China Tower, known as the tallest building in Hong Kong and Asia from 1989 to 1992, is 1,209-foot and it is a fitting building.  The "Tower" sits in the central business district, a ribbon of land densely packed with banks and office buildings squeezed between mountain and harbor.  It is one of the busiest, crowded, active, frenetic cities in the world.  After experiencing it, I was attracted by its visual context and its special features, as this modern building has a flexible layout, reflective glasses, sustainability in architectural design……etc

I.M. Pei, the architect of Bank of China Tower, tends to use large, abstract forms and sharp, geometric designs.  His glass clad structures seem to spring from the high tech modernist movement.  His reliance on abstract form and materials such as stone, concrete, glass, and steel, has been considered a disciple of Walter Gropius.  Nevertheless, he is more concerned with function than theory.  Pei wanted to create a structure that would represent the aspirations of the Chinese people and symbolize good will toward the British people.  His buildings are a unique testament to how the convergence of two great traditions, the Asian and the European, can create new aesthetic standards – timelessness in stone and glass.  He has used the urban, modern style to create the building, such as steel frame and glass curtain wall.  Bank of China Tower is the most noticeable building in Hong Kong, not only the number of stories but is also the only building that stands out from the rest of the other buildings because of it extraordinary shape.

Here come details of the Bank of China:

Glass Skyscraper

First of all, let us look back to 1883, William Le Baron Jenney invented the first "skyscraper construction" building, in which a metal structural skeleton supports an exterior wall on metal shelves (the metal frame or skeleton, a sort of three-dimensional boxlike grid, is still used today).  His earliest surviving metal-skeleton structure, the Second Leiter Building of 1891, stands at the southeast corner of State and Van Buren streets in the Loop.  The granite-face facade is extremely light and open, suggesting the metal frame behind.  The building looks so modern that it comes as a shock to realize it is more than a century old.  On the other hand, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's structural and spatial concepts are analyzed through his three major building prototypes, specifically the skeleton frame building, both in its high- and low-rise manifestations, and the clear-span building.  His most important projects are also examined, not only as isolated functions, but within the context of urban space.  The 'Seagram' building in New York, hailed as a masterpiece of skyscraper design, which profoundly influenced the form and architecture of the office building, and the open space in the city.  The extruded metal and glass curtain wall of Seagram and its use of tinted glass became widely replicated.  After the Seagram building was completed and it encourages street-level open space in association with high-rise buildings.

According to Ken Yeang, skyscraper, as a city-in-the-sky, in a novel design approach that resembles urban design and planning as against the design of a conventional building in a high-rise structure.  It is a new vertical theory of urban design.  It also suggests ideas for the diversification of vertical land uses, the creation of public realms and places-in-the-sky, vertical landscaping, creating high-rise neighborhoods, vertical townscape, vertical transportation and accessibility.

Structure engineer Leslie Robertson describes the tubes as “bundled vertical space trusses."  Almost the entire gravity load of the building flows through the structural diagonals behind the "Xs" of the facade to four corner columns.  There is a fifth central column that splits into a tetrahedron at the twenty-fifth floor with branching legs that pass interior loads to the comer columns adding stability close to...

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