Hospitality A Suite Escape

Foster + Partners transforms a Modernist municipal building in Hong Kong into a gleaming hotel, reconnecting it to the metropolis.

- Anna Fixsen

When Norman Foster first arrived in Hong Kong in 1979, the atmosphere was heady with possibility. The coastal territory, then under British rule, was shifting the underpinnings of its economy from manufacturing to finance, and already preparing for its eventual handover to China. Foster had embarked on his biggest commission to date, a one-million-square-foot headquarters for the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) destined to become a pioneering landmark and an emblem of a new urban era. When it was completed, “it was the tallest building on the harbor,” Foster recalls in an email. “[Since then], the country has made enormous strides. All of this makes it even more exciting to be working here today than it was 40 years ago.”

After decades working in Hong Kong, Foster + Partners has returned to the office tower typology there. This time, however, the firm converted a land marked government building into an opulent hotel, the Murray. The adaptation gives the structure “a new lease on life,” according to Foster, while embodying the next chapter in the region’s rapid rise.