Welcome to the Archives of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation. The purpose of this online database is to function as a tool for scholars, students, architects, preservationists, journalists and other interested parties. The archive consists of photographs, slides, articles and publications from Rudolph’s lifetime; physical drawings and models; personal photos and memorabilia; and contemporary photographs and articles.

Unless otherwise noted, all images and drawings are copyright © The Estate of Paul Rudolph and The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation. Please speak with a representative of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation to get permission to use any drawings or photos. Drawings, sketches and other materials produced by Rudolph’s architectural office at the Library of Congress are maintained there for preservation, but the intellectual property rights belong to the Paul Rudolph Estate and Ernst Wagner, founder of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.

LOCATION
Address: 57 Plantation Road
City: Hong Kong
State:
Zip Code:
Nation: China

STATUS
Type: Housing
Status: Project

TECHNICAL DATA
Date(s): 1994
Site Area:
Floor Area:
Height:
Floors (Above Ground):
Building Cost:

PROFESSIONAL TEAM
Client: Wee Ee Chao
Architect: Paul Rudolph
Rudolph Staff: Mark Squeo, Job Captain (1990-1991)
Associate Architect:
Landscape:
Structural:
MEP:
QS/PM:

SUPPLIERS
Contractor:
Subcontractor(s):

Wee Duplex

Designed for a hill-top site with beautiful views, this would have been a triplex of luxury apartments, surmounted by a penthouse whose use was to be shared by the apartments’ residents. To circumvent the proscribed limits on footprint square-footage, Rudolph raised most of the building above the ground (including the apartments’ swimming pools.)
The composition needed to be compact, owing to the confined size of its site. It is densest at the building’s center: the functional core where are located elevators and exit stairs (almost the only elements, other than structure, which reach all-the-way to the ground.) Around them, the apartments’ living spaces spiral--and project outward in all directions.
To achieve this arrangement, the dwellings are interwoven through a complex of structural elements: concrete columns, cantilevered & suspended slabs & beams, and prominent diagonal struts. Every apartment would have had at least two floors—and some of Rudolph’s drawings indicate that he considered an even more complex arrangement of levels. As Rudolph’s career progressed, his renderings would increasingly include built-in plantings, showing that they were ever more prominent in his thinking. In this project (and softening the structural expression) are plants that thread through the architecture.
The 12,000 sq. ft structure sits high above the ground on pilotis with shifting cantilevered planes which make the building look like a giant kite.
The frame of the structure is made of concrete covered in reflective aluminium and glass walls enfold the building, separating interior and exterior spaces.
Each unit has its own courtyard, elevator and terrace garden, positioned in three directions.
It remains unbuilt.
.