Kowloon Ventilation Building, Hong Kong
1993-1997

Kowloon Ventilation Building (KVB) is the technical support systems building serving Kowloon Station and the approach tunnels. It is sited in the West Kowloon Regional Park, by Victoria Harbour, strategically located above the railway at the point where the cross-harbour rail tunnel crosses the Kowloon shoreline. KVB faces the world's most imposing urban waterfront – an unusually prominent location for such a utilitarian building. The building is a visual celebration of the landfill and harbour frontages that characterize the new man-made Hong Kong.

The building is 90 metres long by 27 metres wide and its primary function is to disperse the build-up of heat from trains, plant and passengers.

Once the operational functions had been dealt with, TFP were faced with the challenge of how to integrate such a utilitarian structure into a public park. In the event, only a third of the building is visible; the remainder is buried in a vast excavation that extends 20 metres down to the rail tunnels. Above ground is a low-cost reinforced-concrete building finished in simple materials – grey metal cladding and yellow and grey tiles – but designed as a dynamic, swooping form that allows it to masquerade as sculpture, with much popular appeal. From some viewpoints, the KVB appears animal-like, from others it is reminiscent of a landscaped hill. It has begun to acquire pet names: the whale, the wave, the dragon, grasshopper and sail boat. It is intended to have all these associations.

The design of the ventilation building mirrors the graphic typology of the Kowloon Station concourse roof so that the two buildings together form a physical and visual relationship.

The modern city is powered by services, utilities and transit systems all of which require large functional machine rooms and system support buildings. The usual strategy for such buildings is to find a back lot location and hide them away in anonymous architecture which, at best, we forget. Faced with a huge building on the world's most imposing urban waterfront, the MTR Corporation directed that an alternative approach should be found. The result is a work of memorable organic architecture that provides a creative catalyst for Hong Kong's first major harbour-side urban park.