HEIGHTS OF FAME

THERE is an old journalistic adage about not letting the facts get in the way of a good story; ask too many questions and your cherished dinner party tales will melt away like the snows in springtime.

When the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HKSB) headquarters in Central was under construction the building work proceeded at the speed of light because it was fabricated with lots of modulated sections bolted on to each other. With Sino-British relations tense as negotiations continued for what became the 1984 Joint Declaration, the territory's rumour factory began whispering that the 48-storey edifice could be taken down almost as quickly if the Bank decided it was going to move in a hurry. The rumour soon became a 'fact', or at least an urban legend.

'I think it is a good story, but pretty removed from the reality of the situation,' said the one man who should know, the building's architect, Sir Norman Foster.

He delivered the line with a polite smile, suggesting he had not grasped it was a facetious question since even architecturally-ignorant journalists would find it unlikely the HKSB would spend a reputed $58 billion on a headquarters, only to have it come down like a pile of Lego blocks.

'Mmmm. I suppose you could see how such a story might happen in the sense the building happened very, very, quickly; at an extraordinary speed,' he said.

'And the original programme was accelerated so that it finished three months ahead of its already accelerated programme. The only way that was possible was by a high degree of prefabrication, so that it was made in a series of modules shipped in from various locations and assembled on site.