Role model: The Government's IT flagship, Cyberport, has won the Intelligent Building of the Year Award for its infrastructure and stunning architecture.

Intelligent Community Forum has handed Cyberport the internationally acclaimed Intelligent Building of the Year Award at the Intelligent Communities Conference & Awards 2004 in New York. It praised the campus for its IT infrastructure and stunning architecture - and for being a role model for future IT-connected communities.

The forum gives the award to commercial buildings that have used broadband and information systems technology to add demonstrable value in the form of advanced services and merits to its tenants.

"New technologies are vital tools in our society today to improve our productivity and quality of life," said Nicholas Yang, the Chief Executive of the management company for the Government-owned IT flagship, Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited. "We must not forget, however, that technologies only facilitate the value creation and acceleration process."

He noted that Cyberport is a platform which focuses on creating value out of technologies. Its ideal tenants are in the content creation and management business that use Cyberport as the delivery platform to quickly grow their business.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Mark Clift, Director for Campus & Project Management said that Cyberport is the Government's vision for creating the IT-interconnected community of the future.

Its commercial offices, interactive shopping centre, five-star hotel and luxury apartments are linked by an internal fibre-optic network that integrates people, technology and business, Mr Clift said.

Digital media centre draws multimedia enterprises

"Apart from the 24/7 network operations centre and the high-bandwidth fibre-optic network, we operate a multi-million-dollar digital media centre for the creative digital multimedia industry in Hong Kong. Cyberport also has a wireless development centre, a one-stop wireless applications development, testing, and delivery platform that significantly reduces developers' time-to-market," Mr Yang said.

"No typical real estate development would invest into value-added facilities like these. Cyberport is a project that Hong Kong is proud of and we are thrilled to see that it is now being internationally recognised."

Cyberport comprises four office buildings, a five-star hotel, a retail entertainment complex and a deluxe residential development. It is designed to create an interactive environment that will be home to a cluster of more than 100 IT companies and 10,000 IT professionals. Wholly owned by the Government, the $15.8-billion project is being developed on a 24-hectare site at Telegraph Bay in the southern district of Hong Kong Island. It. It is being developed in phases and is expected to be completed in 2007.