Technologies of the Slab: Jardine House and visions of modern Hong Kong

Abstract

A year after the 1976 remake of the 1933 King Kong, which ended with the giant ape falling to its death from the newly completed World Trade Center, the Shaw Brothers released a mandarin version, Xing Xing Wang (translated literally as King Kong) set in 1970s Hong Kong. In a scene reminiscent of the American Kong, Xing Xing too was shot and fell from the newly completed Jardine House. What is significant in the synchronous occurrences in the two cities, is not simply that both skyscrapers were opened in 1973 and tallest in the world and in Asia respectively, but how they embodied the internationalization of modern architecture and its ideological entanglement with urban development, economy, culture and media. The multi-story reinforced concrete slab building, having traversed over half a century since Le Corbusier’s dom-ino, is unequivocally the universal architecture of technology par excellence. This realization, which provided Koolhaas the premise for his retroactive manifesto for Manhattan is repeatedly invoked in popular culture. Hong Kong’s 1977 King Kong and NBC’s 1988 Noble House foregrounded the fifty-two story Jardine House as the city’s icon of affluence and power manifest through technology and technological thinking. This paper sets out to map the intersecting contexts and visions that produced the city’s speculative urbanism by examining the films and the technologies of the slab complicit in the narration of modern Hong Kong. From the concrete raft plaza sitting on the marine lot of reclaimed land to the repetitious precast ribbed floor slabs and flexible plan to the circular perforated shear external walls and the building’s claim on various “firsts”, the slab extends its technological rationality into the city through a covered pedestrian bridge; and inaugurated the elevated walkway system in the Central financial district.