Here’s some snaps I took this morning from the 42nd floor of that feng-shui challenged masterpiece, I.M. Pei’s Bank of China building.
This is the Bank of China building in case you don’t know how it looks like. Rather iconic, eh?
This is the base of it with one of the historic buildings in HK Park for scale. The BOC is actually across the street. It’s pretty big, eh?
Now, here’s the snaps. This is the International Financial Center 2, the third tallest building in Asia. It’s really tall and it looks like it will shift the skyline further west then it is now. Here’s how it looks from the ground.
And from the Harbour via the Star Ferry:
That’s one big building folks.
You also get to see the other side of the former Governor’s Compound. This time you can see the front.
Until all the big buildings and landfill happened, the Governor’s Compound loomed over all of HK side.
This is the former War Memorial. During British administrations, the Union Jack flew from the harbour side and the standards of the three services, the Royal Navy, British Army and RAF flew from the island facing side. Knowing the power of symbols, the ChiComs immediately fenced it off when they took over in 1997, being unable to simply bulldozer it because people would remember that there was once something there and it’s harder to rewrite history in a (for the moment) free society.