ABSTRACT
In modern economies the ultimate criterion of a building’s efficiency is its return on
investment. Most houses are not as Le Corbusier stated ‘machines for living in’ but rather
machines for making money.
The profitably of contemporary buildings is thus dependent upon necessarily subjective
factors of taste, modishness and the ingenuity of advertising as well as their ability to
fulfill objective functional needs.
Modern marketing, media relations and un-ambitious environmental bench marking
schemes all enable quite capricious and wasteful development to be represented as
innovative and environmentally friendly. Engineers and Architects in practice must
accept that they are working in an international commercial environment in which
objective criteria must be balanced against the ability of the market to reward novelty
irrespective of its technical validity.
Historically, because of lack of space and high land values Hong Kong has not rewarded
wasteful practices that have gained traction elsewhere. The discipline of Hong Kong’s
domestic market has influenced the type of architecture that we practice.
DLN is the architect of three of the tallest completed towers in the world and currently
has in hand the design of three further super towers that, when complete, will also be
amongst the tallest in the world.
The paper will discuss how, in a modern market driven environment that increasingly
conflates architecture with ephemeral show-business, DLN seeks to reconcile
marketability with rational efficiency in design.
