C Story (Langham Place) 12-2004

C O V E R S T O R Y

L A N G H A M P L A C E H O T E L

Completion of the landmark Langham Place urban renewal project in Mongkok

has brought new levels of luxury accommodation to the district with the newly

opened Langham Place Hotel. Langham Hotels International, a wholly-owned

subsidiary of Great Eagle Holdings Ltd, operates the five-star hotel which

provides 686 guest rooms and a host of advanced amenities.

Langham Place Hotel

L a n g h a m P l a c e , P a r t T w o

Mongkok’s newfive-star attractionMongkok’s newfive-star attractionby Tim Youngs

C O V E R S T O R Y

TT he 42-storey hotel occupies LanghamPlace’s Site B — a long and narrow siterunning between Mongkok’s Shanghai

and Reclamation Streets, and parallel to SiteA’s commercial and retail towers. As part of acomprehensive redevelopment project carriedout by the Urban Renewal Authority and joint-venture developer Great Eagle Holdings Ltd,the hotel shares its 3,157 sq m site with a widerange of government, institution and community(GIC) spaces as well as a minibus terminus anda 1,100 sq m public open space.

In tackling the project, the designers had todevelop a plan to accommodate both luxurious

hotel areas and the various community uses inthe same tower. The solution was found inelevating the hotel to the fourth floor andabove, with the reception and main lobbyreached by lift from the street level vehiculardrop-off and entrance lobby.

GIC facilities occupy the remaining spacewithin the Site B podium. The minibus terminus,featuring 24 spaces plus room for turning circlesand parking, occupies the ground floor at thenorthern end of the site, while the two floorsabove it hold a Food and EnvironmentalHygiene Department cooked food centre and aSocial Welfare Department community centre


including a nursery and youth centre. Access tothe community facilities is from street level atShanghai Street or via a wide 24-hour footbridgefrom the Langham Place shopping centre acrossthe road. The cooked food centre also opensout to the public garden’s upper level. Thedesign team ensured that quality and materialsselection in the GIC facilities remained on parwith that of the entire Langham Placedevelopment, whether in providing a footbridgeconnection of equal standard or in applying thesame stone finish to the exterior.

The public garden on the southern end of thesite is spread over two levels with a ramp and


spiral staircase providing access between thetwo. The split-level park benefits patrons ofboth aspects of the Site B development — hotelvisitors now arrive at a forecourt beside a lushgarden while people heading to the cookedfood centre can find a more pleasantenvironment there as well.

The hotelAs director of architects Wong & Ouyang (HK)Ltd Lam Wo Hei explained, raising the hotel’smain lobby to the fourth floor above the GICareas was a desirable option to the design team.“The fact that we have the lobby on Level 4means that we are away from the hustle and


bustle. If you go to the lobby today and sit in thecoffee shop, you have a nice garden outsideand you hardly notice this is Mongkok,” MrLam said.

The fourth floor double-height lobby alsobenefits from being on the same level as Site A’s

central atrium — the focal point of the entireLangham Place development and a spaceconnected directly to the hotel by a widefootbridge. “The fact that we have a very widebridge, an elevated level, a garden and a coffeeshop across from this 60-metre high urban

4th floor plan

C O V E R S T O R Y

Portal - Work & Play


hotel. Filling an otherwise untapped market forhigher-end restaurants and lounges in thedistrict, eateries include The Place with itsindoor and al-fresco dining at a fourth floorpodium roof garden area, and the Portal - Work& Play venue which is part bar, part businesscentre on the fifth floor. The Ming Courtrestaurant capable of hosting banquets is locatedon the sixth floor, and the double-height 6,600sq ft Langham Place Ballroom with floor-to-ceiling windows and multimedia technology ison the seventh floor. Additional banquet andfunction rooms are located on the eighth floor.

Guest rooms begin on the 11th floor, with280 sq ft Deluxe Rooms configured around acentral corridor on each floor. The Deluxerooms continue to the 22nd floor and arefollowed by 310 sq ft Executive Rooms up tothe 35th floor. 430 sq ft Studio Rooms andlarger Kowloon Rooms ranging between 350and 410 sq ft are also available. 50 suites followon floors 36 to 40. All guest rooms offersophisticated technology for both businesstravellers and general tourists (see IT provisions,page 49) and the interior design makes use oftransparent materials to space-saving effect.Mirrors and extensive glazing feature in all

Portal - Work & Play boardroom

oasis is in many ways far better than if we hadthe lobby on the ground floor,” Mr Lamexplained. “It’s not like Pacific Place, where atthe Conrad or Shangri-La hotels you look outand see gardens and trees. We don’t have thatluxury over in Mongkok.”

In addition to housing the reception area,Level 4 is the first of four floors of food andbeverage outlets and function rooms at the

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Ming Court


Ming Court

Shanghai Room

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The Place


guest rooms — even bathroom walls are madeup of panes of glass to create a sense of largerspaces and admit more natural light, whilepassing along side benefits like the ability towatch a guestroom’s 42-inch plasma TV screenfrom the bath. 2 m by 2.6 m picture windowsat the hotel rooms maximise views to thesurrounding district.

The uppermost levels of the hotel feature theChuan Spa on the 40th floor, a gymnasium onthe 41st and a 400 sq m open-air swimmingpool on the 42nd. The pool is located next tothe Star Room — the highest meeting venue inKowloon and offering a view towards HongKong Island. The 3,450 sq ft venue canaccommodate meetings of up to 150 people,has two adjacent breakout rooms for smallgroup discussions and opens out to the deck forpoolside cocktail parties. A wide range ofmultimedia facilities in the Star Room includevideo-conferencing, simultaneous recordingand screening of an event and built-in LCDprojectors with multiple drop down screens.

Lift lobby

The Place

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Executive Room

36th Floor plan

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Langham Place Ballroom

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Deluxe Room bathroom Swimming pool

Star Room

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GymnasiumChuan Spa

Crowning the hotel is a roof feature of adome, echoing the office tower’s peak and acurved roof descending to partially cover thepool. The latter finish echoes the arc-shapedroof capping the grand atrium and retail toweron Site A, creating a unified design languagethat binds the components together whenLangham Pace is viewed from a distance.


T he Langham Place Hotel is among theworld’s most technologically advanced

hotels, featuring a Wi-Fi bubble as well ascolour touch-screen, web-enabled InternetProtocol (IP) telephony.

The Wi-Fi bubble will allow guests to obtainwireless voice and broadband data accessanywhere in the hotel, meaning no missedcalls in the gym and round-the-clock Internetaccess. Guests can access wireless voiceservices throughout the hotel using in-roomwireless IP phones. The Cisco colour IP Phonesalso include such features as SMS, stock quotes,worldwide weather and on-line news andinformation channels via high resolution touchscreens in the guestrooms. Users can selecttheir language of choice for the phones’multimedia and interactive functions. Guestswho have laptop computers without built-inwireless access can borrow wireless cards fromthe hotel, and further wired broadband anddialup access is available.

The integrated system at the hotel is designedand implemented by PCCW and comprises aconverged network based on Cisco’s AVVID(Architecture for Voice, Video and IntegratedData) system, a LazerSpeed structured cablingsystem by Avaya whereby voice, video anddata communications are carried across a singleIP-based system. The system includes more

than 5 km of fibre optic cables, 4,000 networkconnections, 1,500 IP phones, 500 wirelessaccess points and carrier-grade networkingequipment, all supported by a backbonecapable of simultaneously handling almost700Gb of data.

Other technology highlights include homecountry radio station streaming off the phoneas soon as guests enter their rooms andprogrammable phones for return visitors. Roomsfeature personal safes large enough to hold anotebook PC or a video camera, with theadditional feature of allowing charging whilein use.

developerRenaissance City Development Co Ltd

architect/design consultantWong & Ouyang (HK) Ltd

structural engineerOve Arup & Partners Hong Kong Ltd

m&e engineerWong & Ouyang (BS) Ltd

quantity surveyorLevett & BaileyChartered Quantity Surveyors

hotel interior designersBilkey Llinas DesignCYS Associates (Hong Kong) Ltd

IT provisions at the Langham Place Hotel

project managerThe Great Eagle Development and ProjectManagement Limited

cladding consultantArup Facade Engineering

audio-visual consultantArup Acoustics

lighting consultantsLightsource International (Asia) LimitedTino Kwan Lighting Consultants

signage consultantsDuttonBray Design LimitedGarry Emery Design

fire engineering consultantArup Fire

landscape consultantBelt Collins Hong Kong Limited

main contractorSun Fook Kong

foundation contractorBachy SoletancheSun Fook Kong

security systemHoneywell Limited

lifts & escalatorsSchindler Lifts (HK) LtdOtis

waterproofingPak Wing Engineering Co Ltd

Langham Place credits list

C Story (Langham Place) 12-2004

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Transcript of C Story (Langham Place) 12-2004