Kien-k'ang Financial Centre

Kien-k'ang Financial Centre
建康貿金所, kyen-k'ang-mrūs-kra-sqraq
Record height
Tallest in the world from Jul. 10, 1993 to 2002
Surpassed by	Dayacom World Tower
General information
Status	Complete
Type	Skyscraper
Architectural style	Beaux arts Post-modernism
Address	520 Srūm-gār St. (三河巷)
Town or city	Kien-k'ang
Country	Themiclesia
Current tenants	Samsan Group, Kien-k'ang Equities Trading Commission
Construction started	Jan. 15, 1984
Topped-out	Jul. 10, 1993
Completed	Oc. 5, 1994
Opened	Jan. 1, 1991 (enclosure) Jan. 1, 1995 (tower)
Cost	$1,980,000,000
Owner	Land Bank of Kien-k'ang
Height	504 m
Technical details
Floor count	101
Floor area	412,500 m²
Lifts/elevators	61
Design and construction
Architecture firm	Pastuk & Sons Creative Union & Sons & Company
Developer	United Development Consortium
Structural engineer	Ilmari Trar Tomoyuki Iekami
Main contractor	Pap & Nyil Construction Work

The Kien-k'ang Financial Centre (Shinasthana: 建康貿賈所, kyan-k′ang-krem-mrus-sqraq; abbrev. KKFC) is a supertall skyscraper designed by architectural firms Creative Union & Co. and Pastuk & Sons & Co., located in Kien-k'ang, Themiclesia. This building was officially recognized as the world's tallest building from its topping out in Jul. 10, 1993 until 2002, when it was surpassed at the topping out the Dayacom World Tower, almost twice its height. It opened on Jan. 1, 1995 Costing $1.59 billion in 1984 (circa $4 billion in 2020 dollars), it was also the most expensive skyscraper built to date. Originally planned for 1992, its completion was delayed by two years by the planning inspection and Construction Workers' Strike of 1991.

KKFC has two principal parts, the tower and the enclosure. The tower consists of 101 stories above ground and 8 below, and is served by 61 elevators, 40 of which are capable of high-speed operations at up to 40 km/h and rapid acceleration, gaining world records in both. The enclosure, 7 storeys above ground, is designed as commercial space and accommodates department stores, boutiques, and restaurants. KKFC incorporates architectural elements familiar to the streetscape of the Gate District for the enclosure section and implemented a postmodern interpretation of those elements in the tower's exterior. The buildings incorporate several technical features to overcome challenges encountered in both construction and maintenance, including a difficult foundation, high winds, and potential earthquakes.

Since completion, it is operated by the Kakw Corporation and houses offices of a number of international and domestic corporations and the trading floor of the Kien-k'ang Equities Market. At the base of a building is a shopping centre with fashion boutiques and restaurants. It is served by integrated bus bays, tram stops, and metro rail station. Breezeways connect it to surrounding buildings and the Twa-ts'uk-men Station. During its construction and opening, it was subject of much anticipation, and in some circles it is viewed as a symbol of economic recovery in the 90s. However, it has also been subject to bomb threats several times, resulting in evacuations, though no actual incident has occurred. During the 2003 attack on Tjo-tsjakw-men Station, the building was evacuated for three months.

History

Planning and design (1970 – 1983)

The KKFC, as the world's tallest building, was the result of a long string of competing designs and redesigns to a building project that was originally much more modest, first concretely proposed in 1971. In the early 70s, the area around the KKFC was already a bustling commercial area, being dominated by the Twa-ts'uk-men Station and more than a dozen department stores. This area was exceptionally busy because nearly half a million people commuted through the transport hubs in or around the station. Due to the geology of the area, the city forbade the erection of buildings there more than seven stories tall, and this remains the height limit for most of the area. It was therefore a highly saturated area where new developments were few and far between.

However, investors saw an opportunity when the Twa-ts′uk-men Marshalling Yard was finally removed in 1971 after almost 40 years of delay by National Rail, which relied on the yard to support commuter trains arriving and departing rapidly from the central station at rush hour. The completion of the underground storage tracks of the Inner Region Regional Railway alleviated the need for the above-ground yard, and the City quickly decided to make the land available for a large development. The initial consortium was therefore formed in 1970, backed by multiple banks, and hired Pastuk & Sons to build a tower that would be both useful and monumental for the area. The firm's initial proposal in 1971 called for an office tower of 35 storeys.

The City objected to the building of a pure office tower in this location, believing it made no improvement to the urban environment; in response, Pastuk & Sons decided to convert the first four storeys of the tower to a department store, just like several others in the area. In turn, the consortium found that this conversion reduced the office space available, which also caused consternation with the banks. The architects responded to this problem by making the tower even taller, adding 10 storeys to make the total height 45. This plan was finalized in 1975 and sent to the city for approval, but an election had intervened in 1974 and precipitated a change of leadership. The new council called for new bids, resolving that it would not make exceptions to building regulations unless presented with options.

To this, another consortium with its backers hired Creative Union & Sons to present an alternate vision for the site, which incorporated green space around a 50-storey building, to which was attached a 5-storey department store. In 1976, the City found that the new tower did not have enough parking space and asked Creative Union to provide such a large lot that the sore shortage of parking space around the area would be alleviated. Creative Union presented the city with a surface parking tower in the brutalist style that was eight storeys tall, but the City rejected this design as a councillor, Lord Mit, called it "well and truly repulsive".

Learning of this spurn, Pastuk very rapidly reworked its tower to include an underground parking space that was five levels in height, an unprecedented design. However, the parking space would be very expensive as it meant the tower's foundation would have to be laid even deeper into the ground, and on these grounds it received assuranes from the city that it would be allowed to build another 10 storeys above its existing but stalled 45-storey design, but the redesign work on this addition would also consume several months as Creative Union neared an acceptable revision of its plans as well.

In January 1978, the City proposed the yard site could be divided into two, allowing both towers to be built. This plan was received with jubilation by both consortia but was opposed by other council members, who were concerned that the building of two towers of roughly equal height would fail the city's desire for an iconic, monumental building. The Baronetess Krar wrote that "the key importance of monumental architecture is uniqueness, not sheer size; duplication make monuments ordinary and cheapens it. Having one tower makes it a monument contrasting and complementing the historic atmosphere of Gate District; having two means the rest of Gate District is awaiting redevelopment into towers."

In 1979, the backers of the two consortia, which were financially worn out due to the protracted planning work, pressured each other to merge the project under a single consortium. There were several factors that contributed to the merger, not less the City's own lack of patience for the slow redesig work that occurred with the rejection of each iteration. Pastuk later recounted that, with a project of this magnitude, major structural alterations essentially required a complete redrawing to ensure structural soundness, and with this came the work of redoing all electrical, plumbing, and interior work. The increasing height of the building also required a broader financial basis, encouraging the backers to ally with each other to see to the project's eventual realization. Architecturally, co-operation between two architectural firms could have and did result in conflicts, though "their combined strengths were indispensible to the quality of the eventual product".

The merger of the consortia took place in late 1979, and a draft with the support of the united consortium, which required a grand total of 72 storeys to meet the city's demands for public space and parking facility, and satisfy the expected revenues of creditors, was proposed in 1981. This penultimate draft was, ironically, rejected for not being ambitious enough: the incumbent city leadership, citing delay and public anticipation and frustration, came to view the project not merely as a large development, but as one to "have international primacy". With interest redoubling in what was envisioned the world's tallest tower, the project was redesigned for an ninth and final time to include 101 total storeys and a seven-storey department store for public amenity. The finished draft was approved by the City in 1983.

Since completion (1994 – )

The tower topped out in mid-1993 and was declared complete in late 1994, with inspection work concurrent with finishing carpentry, electrical, plumbing, and painting work. The then prime minister of Dayashina Otoya Endo congratulated the architectural team for the KKFC's historic undertaking, which at the cost of $2 billion at completion was the most expensive building project (with published and verifiable expenditures) in human history. With a total architectural height of 508 m, it replaced the Palace of the Soviets in Reberiya, standing at 495 m, as the world's tallest building. Tenants began to move into the building in November 1994, in phases as the finishing crews moved from one part of the building to another.

According to Nathan Rik, the principal architect at the time of the building's completion, the Palace of the Soviets was challenging to surpass because it was topped by a 100-metre statue, which contain no occupiable space, whereas an office tower like KKFC must, by virtue of its intended purpose, have both occupiable and useful space near its top. Thus while the KKFC's total archictectural height surpassed its predecessor by only 13 m, the highest occupiable level surpassed the Palace of the Soviets by a considerably larger margin. To date, while the KKFC has fallen out of the top 10 tallest buildings in the world, by highest occupiable floor it remains within the top 10.

On Jan. 1, 1995, the Themiclesian prime minister Lord De (祉君) opened the tower in a highly-publicized ceremony. Describing the tower as the cumulation of 30 years of development work (planning had started for the site in the 60s), he further embellished the tower as a fitting tribute to an entire generation's effort towards mutual support and respect to differences, "at the more abstract level". But by this time, parts of the tower had been operational for some weeks, while others were still vacant.

Architecture

To accelerate the building's design, the two consortia that originally competed with each other for the City's site merged in 1979 and worked concurrently. In this effort, the team from Creative Union & Sons included by Tomoyuki Iekami, a Dayashinese architect who first joined the firm in 1980 as an understudy to Ilmari Trar, who superintended the project from 1976 to 1986, and soon became a leading member charged with key structure and design work. Tomoyuki developed a reputation for dedication and the rigorous, exacting quality of work. After his involvement with the KKFC, he established his own practice in Dayashina and was since responsible for the design of five of the ten tallest buildings in the world, all of which have surpassed the KKFC in height. His co-partner, Tep-pi Pyer, said that Tomoyuki "found reward in his hard and persevering work to realize one of the most tortured projects in the history of his profession."

See also

• List of tallest buildings in Septentrion