CaiNiao Smart Gateway

CaiNiao Smart Gateway is located near the Hong Kong International Airport and the Hong Kong Zhuhai Macau Bridge, and is part of the city’s mandated strategy to address the booming growth of e-commerce worldwide and demand for cross-border logistics and delivery services. The logistics centre provides abundant spaces with high headroom and tolerances for floor smoothness and flatness, in order to facilitate advanced automated logistics technologies to achieve high efficient throughput.

Due to the triangular, irregularly shaped site and sloping planar building height restriction for air traffic management, the building form took shape and in conjunction with the garnering of statutory approvals on area exemption and fire engineering, in order to maximize the development potential and cater to operational requirements as the brief objectives in the first priority. The ramp and office blocks have been strategically placed at either corners, allowing the bulk of central volume to be dedicated to logistical space with open floor planning. Offices spaces, which have a lesser headroom demand, provided for each warehouse level have been strategically placed on mezzanine levels, maximizing the warehouse area while maintaining close proximity with direct communication between office and logistic operation. The peripheral spaces remaining at grade are implemented as landscaped gardens where possible, redefining a more welcoming and sustainable approach to a new era of logistic centre.

Care has been taken to counter the traditional mindset of a warehouse as being boxy and enclosed through the use of curves, openings, cladding and colour to soften its profile and break down its mass and to reinforce the client’s brand identify via its use of corporate colour. The end result successfully creates an architectural landmark within the HKIA cargo precinct, visible from the airport and surrounding environs, and an iconic property for the corporate brand.