Vertical thinking

Exquadra

Manila, Philippines

Our client wanted to realise a unique, high-end and sustainable office development that will stand as a new landmark for Manila. With aspirations to achieve LEED Gold certification, the building will rise 170 m into the city skyline and offer 96,530 m² of Grade A standard accommodation for corporate business tenants. Buro Happold was appointed to provide sustainability and vertical transportation consultancy.

Buro Happold was appointed to provide sustainability and vertical transportation consultancy

We aligned our client’s vision to create high end corporate facilities with the flexibility to accommodate BPO tenants, achieving a 96,530m² grade A standard accommodation

Our input maximised lettable floor area and return on investment

Challenge

Although our client wanted to focus on creating good quality corporate accommodation, they also required the flexibility to house business process outsourcing (BPO) tenants in the low zone office areas. As BPO tenants occupy space at a higher density than corporate clients, however, achieving Grade A standard vertical transportation (VT) for them would necessitate increased lift size, quantity and number of stops. This would mean that more space would need to be allocated for the vertical transportation systems, in turn reducing our client’s lettable floor area and their profit margin by 2%.

Buro Happold was only employed to provide vertical transportation and sustainability consultancy input on this project, but we drew on our interdisciplinary expertise to work with both our client and the architect to develop a holistic solution to this problem.

Solution

We agreed that our client’s vision to provide Grade A standards to corporate tenants should not be compromised, but that it need not extend to BPO tenants. This means that, should a BPO company occupy the low zone office space, the performance of the VT serving them would not meet Grade A standards. Nonetheless, we collaborated with the architect to consider design concepts and control options that would optimise the low zone as much as possible for future BPO tenants.

By drawing on our interdisciplinary knowledge and applying experience gained on previous projects, we were able to develop a solution that extended beyond our VT remit.

Value

Taking into account our client’s aims, the feasibility of the space and the related building codes, we achieved a strategy that can realise our client’s vision without compromising the flexibility of the development.