In the month of November after a long wait, the HSBC Business School finally relocated to its new academic building located right beside the library on the banks of the Da Sha River. The building adds a new dimension to the business school and opens a path to an even brighter future by providing the infrastructural supports needed for it to become a globally renowned business school. Constructed with the help of a generous donation of 120 million RMB provided by HSBC and significant contributions from the Shenzhen Government and the business community of Shenzhen, the building is the ‘ largest business school building in the world”. This was made possible by the concerted efforts of Professor Hai Wen, the Dean of HSBC Business School. As former president of Peking University Mr. Xu Zhihong rightly pointed during the opening ceremony “every brick of this building has been laid because of the concerted efforts of Professor Wen Hai”.
The buildings primary designer the Hong Kong Huayi Design Consultants described the building as ‘as sophisticated a business school building can get’ and a ‘modern but extremely useful design’. This reporter privileged enough to write this article while looking out the new building into the sunset felt breeze of positivity suggestive of the great times ahead.
Design
The building is an ideal example of an ergonomically designed academic building that helps foster independent though and research. It is spread over nine floors with two underground floors and a parking space for over 160 cars. With a total floor area of 10392.45 meters and a construction area of 54,975 meters, a height of 33 meters and an atrium area of 3128 sq. meters, the HSBC Business School Teaching Building now enjoys the distinction of being the largest business school building in the world.
The building does not compromise utility against design. The classrooms are radially spread around the atrium from floor 2 to 5. With a total of 12 master’s classrooms, 4 EMBA classrooms, 4 MBA classrooms and a host of discussion rooms and seminar rooms, PHBS now boats of infrastructure required to undertake large scale expansion projects.
Another key feature of the new building is the connectivity it provides to the students and faculty members to carry out their independent research with its own wireless and LAN internet services dubbed the PHBS network and not relying on the wifi provided by the University Town of Shenzhen. The PHBS network, now the envy of several other schools consists of an intricate network of 2589 network ports, 292 wifi routers, 300M network bandwidth servers and a 100 TB storage server spread over an area of 30 sq.m which as a student from the School of Communication Engineering puts it is “enough to provide seamless connectivity to a small Chinese town”.
The building is environmentally sustainable as well. It employs technologies such as rainwater recovery system to supply water to the architectural ponds, roofing siphon drainage, multiple frequency air-conditioning to reduce energy consumption, sound sensitive corridor lighting to reduce wastage, use of natural glass to maximize the use of sunlight which gives the building its unique façade of dark blue and is a visual delight especially during sunrise and sunset.
From an architectural standpoint, the building incorporates the best of east and west. Its Chief designer envisioned the building to ‘give an impression of serenity and peace to its viewer and of convenience to its users’. The smooth curves of the building are all inspired from the ancient Chinese architectural style of emulating flowing water bodies in design. The façade from the outside is a slanting one that gives the impression of being suspended in the air to anyone who looks down through it. The deep blue glass used as an envelope for the structure gives the onlookers a soothing feel. The location right beside the Dasha River serves as an excellent complement to the design. As one student puts it, the ‘new building forms a part of the mystical atmosphere created by the Dasha River and the library spanning the river like a dragon’. The corridors on the subsequent floors are curved to imitate a water body as well. Upon entering the building the atrium greets the visitors who are then left in awe when they look up to see a beautifully lit ceiling and an intricate network of walkways connecting the floors. The first floor of the building is a destination unto itself, with a visitor’s gallery, an alumni room etc. As this article is being written, an enormous Christmas tree adorns the atrium and greets the visitors in the true Christmas Spirit.
Journey till now
The PHBS community has been enjoying the new building for over a month now. Within a short span of a month, the new building has become a cherished daily part of the like of all ‘PKUers’. As a student from the class of management puts it, ‘the new building is an ideal place to study as the library is right across the road. The only problem is the distance from the dormitory’. ‘But then again, maybe locating the building away from the dormitory is a way to make us study more’, he jokingly adds. This reporter believes it might be true too, because the new building is turning into a home away from home. “There are so many places here to sit and have off-classroom discussions that I don’t feel like going back to the dorm”, said one student. The newly opened restaurant and the awaited Starbucks have turned into hang out spots too attracting people from the entire University Town of Shenzhen. The new restaurant as one Tsinghua students put in for comic relief of course “is where most of the students from Tsinghua now take their dates to”.
The school has exponentially expanded its activities too leveraging the vast opportunities that this augmented infrastructure provides. The two thousand seat auditorium situated in the basement served as the venue for the PHBS Forum on CPC’s plenary meeting: A dialogue with Hai Wen and Fan Gang, which received an overwhelming response from the academic community.
It is with great certainty that this reporter can say that the new building marks a new milestone in the development of PHBS and will serve as one of the cornerstones of its future development. The atmosphere of independent thought that it provides will draw academics from all over the world. Jacob Wenzel, a student from Germany words it well, he hopes “that the new building will be a symbol of the melting pot of creative minds from all over the world and a symbol of academic excellence in Shenzhen”. This reporter wishes the same and believes that the new PHBS teaching building will help PHBS produce business leaders of tomorrow and continues to serve as an instrument of growth for not only PHBS but the entire academic community of University Town and PKU Shenzhen.
Written by Sunny Mewati
Edited by Sunny Mewati
