The Hong Kong International Commerce Centre (ICC) is the tallest building in Hong Kong and the seventh tallest building in the world, as ranked by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Rising 484 meters (1,588 feet) above Kowloon Station, the ICC offers more than 270,000 square meters (2.9 million square feet) of office, exhibition, conference, and hotel space.
The highest hotel in the world, the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong, occupies the top sixteen floors of the ICC. The uppermost story—the 118th—is home to the world’s highest bar and swimming pool. A critical piece of the engineering puzzle, therefore, was to ensure that hotel guests remain comfortable during high wind events.
Hong Kong’s wind climate is one of the world’s most unique. Tall buildings share space with impressive topography and a wide harbor, and typhoons occur regularly. The world-renowned engineering consultants at Arup hired CPP to find out how wind would affect ICC occupants and to answer key questions about the tower’s response to typhoon-force winds.
To understand the wind climate, CPP’s engineers and atmospheric scientists first measured wind speeds on a 1:4,000 scale topographical model of the Hong Kong area. Measuring wind speeds and turbulence levels right at the ICC construction site gave us the information we needed to correctly model the approach winds that would influence the building’s design.
CPP’s structural experts then designed and built a 1:500 scale model of the ICC and all buildings and structures within a 710 meter (2,300 foot) radius. We measured wind loads and characterized the ICC’s structural behavior using our boundary layer wind tunnel in Fort Collins, Colorado. Our engineers examined data for several candidate building designs, including the one that the design team ultimately chose to build.
Our engineers demonstrated that the ICC’s occupants would not experience enough wind-induced building movement to cause discomfort, and we delivered critical information about the typhoon-induced wind loads that the ICC’s internal frame would need to withstand.
Construction on the ICC began in 2002 and was completed in 2010. CPP is proud to have played a critical role in the development of this historic structure.