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Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre
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On 30th June 1997, the British Governor handed over Hong Kong to the Peoples Republic of China in the newly opened extension of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The new building, with its bird-like sculptured roof framed in steel, dominates the Victoria Harbour. Cleveland Bridge supplied and erected the structural steelwork for this striking futuristic building. The new Centre stands on a 6.5 hectare reclamation island site projecting into the Harbour. It is integrated with the original Centre on the harbour front by an atrium link, a multi-level bridge structure spanning Harbour Road and a waterway. The new building provides 166,000 square metres of floor space, including three exhibition halls and a column-free Grand Hall of about 4300 square metres. The complex multi-curved roof of the main building is designed to carry typhoon loading over spans up to 81m with long cantilever sections. In the face of strong international competition Cleveland Bridge won the contract for the 16500t of structural steelwork to be erected during an intense two-year programme for the project – 8000t in the main roof; 5500t in the atrium link and 3000t in the internal floor structures between concrete core walls. Cleveland Bridge undertook the detailed design, fabrication and erection for all the steelwork. The separate structures of the atrium link and the main roof provided quite different challenges, so sourcing the steelwork and choosing methods had to suit each challenge. |
The atrium link is 100m long, bridging a clear span of 75m and the weight of the structure is suspended from a set of arched trusses above roof level. This required a temporary bridge structure on temporary piles on which to build the complete atrium link, until its weight could be transferred to the permanent trusses.
The main roof is supported on thirteen primary plane trusses spaced at 13.5m centres and spanning 81m; none of the trusses is identical and they vary in depth to a maximum of 11m. The most practicable method required big lift erection of assembled pairs of trusses but there was no space at site to assemble them. Accordingly, the roof fabrication was placed with a fabricator in the Philippines; the trusses were assembled in this yard, in pairs; then they were brought to site by a special roll-on/roll-of ship.
Construction of this complex building on a confined site with many sub-contractors was not easy: the work was more akin to bridge building. The architect’s vision was achieved on time and Cleveland Bridge had helped to construct another world landmark structure.