PACIFIC PLACE

Hong Kong, China

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Pacific Place is massive mixed-use urban complex in Hong Kong's 
Central district along Queensway and Hong Kong Park. Nearby are the 
famed Lippo Centre and Bank of China as well as Hong Kong's Supreme 
Courthouse. Designed by the firm of Wong & Ouyang as one of the city's 
largest comprehensive commercial developments, Pacific Place was built 
on the site of the old Victoria Barracks in two phases: Phase I 
(1985-86) and Phase II (1988-91).

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The tileset includes the following four buildings:


JW MARRIOT HOTEL

This 40-story building houses the 609-room JW Marriot Hotel in its 
upper portion, the Atrium apartments in its lower half, and a 4-screen 
cinema in its base. This was part of Phase I.


ONE PACIFIC PLACE

This is a 36 story office building and was part of Phase I. In the 
podium is housed a portion of the 3-level Pacific Place shopping mall 
and its skylit atrium.


CONRAD INTERNATIONAL HOTEL

This modern 5-star hotel boasts 511 rooms all located in the upper 
portion of the tower. The 36 stories of the elliptical tower house the 
Parkside apartments in its lower half. The base of this portion of 
Phase II contains the mall's food court.


ISLAND SHANGRI-LA HOTEL

The flamboyant neo-baroque luxury of the 566-room, 5-star Island 
Shangri-La Hotel fills the upper levels of this 50-story elliptical 
tower. This final tower of Phase II also includes office space called 
Two Pacific Place and parts of the shopping mall.

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Some notes on scurking all this:

Following in the footsteps made by James Nissen's Pentagon, Wren 
Weburg's Mall of America, Charles Warren's Busch Stadium, Richard 
Yoon's GE Building, and even a far earlier Pacific Place by Lorencio 
S. Mateo, I tried to make a Pacific Place multiple-tile SCURK 
building. However, I also wished to allow all the component buildings 
to work independently, much like Stephen McGlen's Louvre and Lee 
Tong's Temple of Solomon. Complicating matters, the complex is on a 
sloping site with portions underground. Thus, I've done alot of 
improvising and fakery, expecially with facades that don't exist on 
the real buildings.

The lower base of the Conrad Hotel should be underground, but as 
making a slope is out of the question on this tile, I tried to make a 
more elaborate base and pool. I've also simplified some of the swirly 
portions that exist on the real base, and the tower curvature does not 
look quite correct (but I'm sick of dealing with it!). The same is 
true of the Shangri-La Hotel, though its base is more true to form 
with the curved sunken garden. Next to the Shangri-La is a tall 
complementary government office building, of which only a butchered 
angular piece of the base could be included (I didn't want to leave a 
blank plaza). The Shangri-La's "S" icon is not quite accurate, but I 
prefered mine over the more correct but hard to see red "S" on a white 
background. Also, the Shangri-La's large supporting columns are in 
reality covered with glazing, but I find glass columns atrociously 
kitschy. I also guessed on the half-circle base skylight as I didn't 
have views of that portion of the building.  I think the curved 
skylight is actually made up of radial pyramidal skylights, but I 
couldn't quite draw those nicely, so I made it flat reflective glass 
(I'm particularly fond of the reflection in it).

I tried my best making dark glass for the smooth skin of One Pacific 
Place and on the angular bays of the Marriot Hotel. I also tried my 
best with the curving sides of the elliptical towers.  They should be 
slightly more reflective, but it's already a nightmare mixing the 
pixels for the thin curving spandrels and gradual modelling the curved 
surface without throwing in reflective glass. While you correct the 
pixelling of the spandrels, you have to deal with keeping everything 
crisp looking and keeping some color. Then there is the interesting 
yet frustrating phenomenon of strong verticle lines and other patterns 
cutting across the facade due to alignments of certain pixels. You try 
and fix that and then find that in doing so you messed up the gradient 
and spandrels again. Aaaarrggh! They're still not perfectly smoothed 
out, but I am not touching them anymore!

Fortunately, I didn't do these from scratch. I had an excellent 
close-up aerial shot of Pacific Place that was at almost the perfect 
angle. Cut-and-paste is cool, but cleaning the mish-mashy colored mess 
and bringing out the details is slow work. I've been tinkering with 
these tiles since last summer trying my best to remain consistent even 
though the style changed over time.

Enjoy!


Created by Lee Sojot

5/1/99
