International Commerce Centre
At 484 m, this is the only building in Hong Kong with more than 100 floors — and it had to be trimmed down so it wouldn't overtop the surrounding mountains.
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Hong Kong's tallest tower sits directly above the Elements mall in West Kowloon, with the south face opening onto Victoria Harbour. It was the world's fourth tallest building when it opened in 2010, designed by New York firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. The floor-numbering scheme alone tells you something about the city.
What to look for
- The elevator display: watch the floor counter skip numbers containing "4" (tetraphobia — the digit sounds like "death" in Cantonese) and also skip several others including 5, 6, 7, 26, and 28 for reasons the building's own records leave unexplained.
- The south side of the building faces Victoria Harbour.
- The gap between the top floor (physically the 108th storey) and its posted number of 118, a direct result of the missing digits.
Enter via Elements mall; the nearest MTR stops are Kowloon Station and Austin Station, both adjacent to the building.
International Commerce Centre is one of 34 sights worth the detour in Hong Kong, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Hong Kong pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Hong Kong
- Bank of China TowerThe first skyscraper outside the United States to break 1,000 feet — its glass triangles cut the Central skyline unlike anything around it.
- Central PlazaA four-bar neon clock 374 metres above Wan Chai changes colour every 15 minutes, blinking at each quarter-hour change.
- Hong Kong DisneylandThe only Disneyland where a walkway was deliberately bent so good qi energy would not drain into the South China Sea.
- The CenterAfter dark, hundreds of neon bars scroll slowly through the full color spectrum from base to crown — a light show wired into the steel itself.
- Tsing Ma BridgeThe span that ended Lantau Island's water-only isolation — 1,377 metres of road and rail hung from two towers.
- Nina TowerDesigned to be the tallest building on earth, then grounded by an airport and split into a memorial for a kidnapped husband who never came home.