I first noticed Empire Centre while walking down the streets of Hong Kong from our Singapore office.. on Google Earth..
I was struck immediately by the extreme pollution of the reflective glass facade. They turned yellow with tones of purple and brown on the edges. I knew we could bring it back to their brand new condition..
I was so excited for this opportunity that I reached out to everyone I could find within the building management. I believed they would be relieved to know there was a solution to their problem but it turned out no one answered, no one seemed interested to hear me out.
One Sunday afternoon, from my sofa in Singapore, I looked for some new contacts within the landlord organization (Sino Group) that I still hadn't reached out to. I found David Ng. David is the son of Robert Ng, President of Sino Group. The Ng family owns Sino Group in Hong Kong and Far East Organisation in Singapore. They are like royalties in the Asian mega landlord world.
I decided to roll the dice and send him a one liner on LinkedIn that said, in a nutshell: you have a problem, I have the solution.
2h later I received an answer: Sounds interesting, tell me more.
2 days later I was in HK for a mock up (you are looking at the result below). It was ironic to finally meet most of the management that I reached out to before.
It was a very hot HK summer day, I lost a few litres of sweat doing the mock up, but the success was total and I will always remember hearing the claps from David followed by the claps of the whole team when they noticed the result.
2 months later we started the project and, after a week of work, I sent a picture of the progress to David and I got one of the most beautiful messages I will ever read from a client that said: "I'm crying with joy. Thank you". I then understood how important it was for the owner's family as this building was not only their headquarters but it was built by Sino Group and Far East Organization founder Mr. Ng Teng Fong, David's grandfather. We were not just restoring the facade, we were bringing the building back to its glorious days when Mr Ng built it in 1980. Our work did not only embellish the building but it carried an emotional value.
I will be forever thankful to David and Sino Group for putting their trust into RENUGLASS hands and giving so much meaning to our works.
Building Name: Empire Centre & TST Centre
Owner: Sino Group
Location: Hong Kong, Tsim Sha Tsui
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