Upper House Hong Kong

Architecture & Design

Perched above Pacific Place in Admiralty, The Upper House occupies floors 38 through 49 of a tower within Swire Properties’ Pacific Place complex, designed by the Hong Kong firm Wong & Ouyang, whose earlier phases opened between 1989 and 1990. Hong Kong-born interior architect André Fu, working on the hotel itself when it opened in 2009, stripped away conventional hotel excess in favour of a tranquil, residential aesthetic — natural limestone, bamboo, and custom shoji-inspired glass screens replace the marble-and-gilt vocabulary common to the city’s other five-star properties. The 117 guest rooms and suites, starting at roughly 730 square feet, offer direct sightlines toward Victoria Harbour or the green peaks of Hong Kong Island through floor-to-ceiling windows — generous by any Hong Kong standard, and unusually so for a hotel this centrally located — many comparable five-star properties elsewhere on the island start their entry-level rooms at less than half that footprint.

Location & Transit Connectivity

Positioned directly above Admiralty MTR station, the property connects to the Island, Tsuen Wan, South Island, and East Rail lines, putting Central a couple of minutes away and Kowloon under ten across the harbour. Stepping out at street level places guests within Pacific Place’s pedestrian network, with historic tram stops nearby on Queensway. For culinary exploration beyond the hotel, classic cha chaan tengs and dai pai dongs in neighbouring Wan Chai are within a ten-minute walk, offering wonton noodles and milk tea alongside the district’s newer contemporary dining rooms.

Dining & Amenities

The hotel’s original signature restaurant, Café Gray Deluxe under chef Gray Kunz, has since been succeeded by Salisterra, a Mediterranean restaurant on the 49th floor under the culinary direction of chef Ricardo Chaneton, previously of the Michelin-starred restaurant Mono — a lineage of two distinct, chef-driven concepts occupying the same top-floor space over the hotel’s history rather than a single unbroken dining identity. Guests access the Sky Bridge on the 49th floor, a soaring atrium that frames the city below, alongside a 24-hour gym, dedicated yoga space, and a collection of contemporary Asian art displayed throughout the public corridors and guest levels rather than confined to a single gallery space.

Economic Context

Room rates at The Upper House sit among the highest on Hong Kong Island, priced against both the property’s design pedigree and its position inside Swire Properties’ flagship Pacific Place development — one of the most valuable pieces of commercial real estate in the territory, anchoring luxury retail, Grade-A office towers, and three hotels under one master-planned complex since the late 1980s. That scale gives Upper House access to shared infrastructure and footfall few standalone boutique hotels can replicate, even as its own guest experience is deliberately pitched as quiet and residential rather than resort-scale.

Neighborhood Context

Admiralty sits between Central’s financial core and Wan Chai’s mixed commercial-residential streets, giving Upper House guests a genuine choice of character within a short walk in either direction. Hong Kong Park, immediately adjacent to Pacific Place, offers a green buffer with an aviary and conservatory built into the hillside — a rare piece of maintained parkland this close to the harbour — while government and diplomatic buildings cluster nearby, reflecting Admiralty’s long-standing role as an administrative as well as commercial centre, a function the district has carried since well before Pacific Place itself existed. That layered setting, financial district, government precinct, and green space within a few minutes of each other, is part of what the hotel’s design deliberately responds to rather than competes with.

Practical Information

Because Upper House shares its tower and podium levels with Pacific Place’s retail and office functions, guests arriving by car or taxi typically enter through a dedicated hotel drop-off rather than the mall’s main entrances, and check-in happens away from the retail foot traffic below, a small design decision that reinforces the residential feel the hotel is built around. The 2009 opening and subsequent maintenance of André Fu’s original design mean the property has aged carefully rather than through a disruptive full renovation cycle, keeping the residential, understated aesthetic consistent across more than a decade and a half of operation. Guests should also expect the hotel’s quieter public spaces — the design deliberately avoids a grand, high-traffic lobby in favour of smaller, more intimate reception areas — to feel different from the scale and spectacle of Hong Kong’s more conventional five-star properties nearby.