Lydon
January 26th, 2012, 10:33 AM
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A new office development for Telesure Investment Holdings
12 Dec 2011
Bigen Africa has been contracted to provide all civil and structural engineering services for a prestigious 55 000 square-metre office development for Telesure Investment Holdings in Johannesburg.
The project, with a value of R410 million, will consolidate the company’s current business units in six separate buildings in Johannesburg and Pretoria. The new building comprises a main core area and two wings. One wing has a basement with two office floors and the other one has two basements and two office floors.
Telesure Investment Holdings is part of an international financial services group that houses leading insurance brands in South Africa, including Auto & General Insurance, Unity Insurance and Dial Direct Insurance, as well as insurance brokerages such as Budget Insurance Brokers and 1st for Women Insurance Brokers and life insurance provider 1Lifedirect.
“Telesure wanted a 24 000 m2 office building with substantial parking. They requested that the building allow for maximum flexibility in terms of the internal layout of the office floors, the ability to sub-let portions of the building, if necessary, and the ability to expand, should the need arise,” says Johann Human, Bigen Africa Technical Director.
Other factors considered in the design were efficient circulation of the 2 500 staff members with little reliance on elevators and an aesthetical building drawing on the classical principles of form and order while still representing the forward-thinking culture of a contemporary organisation.
Security, IT infrastructure, energy efficiency and economy were also all given high priority.
“In response to Telesure’s request for maximum flexibility, the building has been designed as four separate double-storey office blocks, all connected to a central public core which houses common functions,” says Johann.
The site for the new building is at the junction of the William Nicol Highway and the Helderfontein Spruit, a tributary of the Jukskei River, four kilometres north of Fourways and five south of Diepsloot. It is bordered to the west by Dainfern Estate, to the south by the river, to the west by William Nicol and to the north by the upcoming Steyn City development.
In terms of topography, the site is characterised by a steep North to South slope of approximately 25 metres, and several excavated pits that are the remnants of sand mining that took place years ago.
The aggressive fall across the site and the concentrated storm water run-off along the eastern boundary has led to the lower regions of the site developing an early wetland character.
The outstanding feature of the site is undoubtedly a particularly attractive section of river and flood plain.
Each of the four office blocks consists of two levels of open-plan office space, effectively creating eight separate office plates of approximately 2 600 m2 each, and the possibility of eight separate addresses, should the need arise.
Each office plate is flanked to the south by a patio that overlooks the wetland, to the east and west by services pods and to the north by a circulation spine that links blocks to each other through the central core.
Adjacent to the circulation spine on the north side of each office plate are a series of alternating pause areas and light wells. The light wells extend through the office levels to the parking floors below to provide employees with daylight and natural ventilation.
On the upper block, the light wells will be planted with indigenous trees that provide partial shading to the full volume glass façade on the north during summer and lose their leaves in winter to allow heat into the offices.
On the lower block, the light wells will be planted with flower boxes suspended in the space to form a living “chandelier” that hangs between consecutive pause pods.
The central axes of the four office blocks are aligned East-West which unlocks a two-fold advantage. The first is to give the major facades a north and a south orientation to ensure that the building will perform optimally with regards to natural lighting and thermal performance. The second advantage is that the buildings follow the natural contours of the site.
The southern block is two storeys below the two northern blocks ensuring that all eight office halls have a direct view towards the river and wetland. This reduces the scale of the overall composition to blend in with the predominantly residential fabric of the site’s surrounds.
This orientation also means that the building is perfectly angled towards William Nicol to maximise exposure.
To avoid the wider than average width of the floor-plates, the floor-to-floor height of the office levels is substantially higher than the norm. This allows for maximum daylight penetration through full height glazing, and also enhances the feeling of openness and space.
The core is the connecting element between individual office blocks and the parking levels below. It is essentially an indoor piazza on two levels.
The upper entrance level houses the main reception and security, smaller formal and informal meeting rooms and visitor’s lounge areas. The lower piazza level houses the staff canteen, coffee shop, wellness centre, gymnasium and staff lounges.
Directly attached to the core is a free-standing conference centre that houses the larger conference and meeting rooms and the executive office suites.
The conference pod “floats” over a reflection pond to the side of the main entrance, while the executive office pod floats above the canteen and the outdoor piazza on the level below.
Unlike the office blocks, the core is not aligned to acknowledge the contours, but rather to take advantage of a very scenic bend in the river below, whilst simultaneously allowing for direct east and west daylight penetration into its space.
The main entrance is approached from the gatehouse via a dramatic porte-cochere roof over the drop-off area that features an integrated cascading water feature.
This roof over-sails the core from its origin in the north to its termination beyond the southern façade, where it is supported by two giant glass clad columns which metaphorically suggests fibre optic cables which are the actual conductors of the business.
The porte-cochere roof itself is symbolic of the arrow in the Telesure logo, and is representative of progress and technological advancement.
The elliptically shaped core is an impressive, powerful space, 30m wide and 90m long, double volume at its northern entrance and four volumes high on the southern end.
The off-shutter finished concrete walls of the core are engineered to fully support its roof, thereby rendering the space completely column-free. Even the walkway bridges that link adjacent office blocks through the core space are engineered to span the core without column support.
Vertical transportation is positioned at the centre of the core to provide links to all office and floor levels via escalators, stairs and a bank of scenic lifts.
The lower piazza of the core will house an iconic three storey high artwork being created especially for the building by the Spier Art Foundation.
The piece will float dramatically from the western face of the wall, opposite the glass-clad executive offices that ‘cut’ through the concrete walls and into the core’s interior through a 30m-long opening.
Throughout the floors of the core, will be several other art pieces as yet to be created by young and emerging local artists under the guidance of the Spier Foundation.
Staff parking is housed below the four office blocks in three naturally ventilated and lit parking levels.
All parking levels will have direct access via two security-controlled entrances into the core. From any of the parking levels, staff will have to walk up a maximum of one floor to gain access to the core. Thereafter, employees all use a set of common escalators that will give them access to their respective office levels.
This eliminates the need for large numbers of lifts to move staff vertically and, in turn, presents huge energy and capital running-cost savings to the project. The limited lifts incorporated are purely for paraplegic access and for service use.
IMPACT OF THE DEVELOPMENT
Job Creation
As part of the construction of the building, a database of all available local labour from the neighbouring communities of Diepsloot and Cosmo City has been set up, and the building’s contractor has, from the first week of construction, begun employing people from this database.
Telesure foresees that much of their future call-centre recruitments will come from these upcoming communities, as well as from the bordering Steyn City and Helderfontein Estate developments.
Road Upgrades
As part of the development of the site, the existing William Nicol Road from Fourways up to the site is to be upgraded to dual carriageways in both directions with a new quarter-link exchange at the site. This will substantially alleviate the current congestion between Broadacres Road and Fourways, and provide much-needed relief to local residents.
Staff Motoring
In order to reduce harmful carbon emissions arising from motoring, Telesure will implement a system that encourages the use of public transportation instead of private motoring, by providing a free shuttle service from the nearby Fourways and Diepsloot transport nodes to a dedicated public transport node to be developed on the site.
Local Telephony and Data
In an effort to enhance the current infrastructure to the area, Telesure has agreed to house a Telkom exchange on site that will boost Telkom’s capacity in the area and assist with growth as future developments materialise.
Waste Recycling
Other initiatives by Telesure include a waste recycling centre on site that educates and encourages staff to recycle glass, paper, plastic, light bulbs, batteries and so forth.
Wetland and River
The development incorporates plans to firstly rehabilitate the existing fledgling wetland to pristine condition and thereafter maintain the wetland and the portion of river that fronts onto the site.
From the onset of the project, the architects worked with an environmental consultant and the City of Johannesburg’s environmental management department to ensure that the adjoining wetland is treated with importance and care.
A full study of the wetland was generated and documented and, following several design meetings with the city, the building was repositioned and redesigned until it was well above the agreed wetland delineation line, with a substantial buffer zone between the two.
A site-specific environmental management plan was created that outlined how groundwater, flora and fauna would be protected both during and after construction to ensure that the impact of the development would be minimal.
In addition, the developer has undertaken to use only indigenous landscaping within the site and to plant the roofs of the lower blocks to create a green roof of nearly 5 000m2, which reduces the net impact of the development of the site.
Energy Efficiency
In response to the energy crisis facing South Africa, it was decided that the development would be as energy efficient as possible.
Architecturally, the building is thermally treated to reduce the cooling and heating load by way of a landscaped and insulated concrete roof, double glazing on the full-height south facades and single performance glazing on the north facades.
A number of energy-efficient features in the design of the air-conditioning system ensures that the building’s impact on the environment is reduced, while also creating a more healthy and comfortable environment for the occupants.
The cooling and heating system is optimised in terms of equipment selection and operating conditions and is constantly controlled and monitored by a computerised building management system.
An economy cycle increases the outside air up to 100% when outdoor temperatures are moderate.
The data centre cooling is done by a Kyoto cooling system which maintains conditions in the data centre for 87% of the time without any mechanical cooling, making it the most efficient cooling system available.
In addition, a heat recovery cycle is introduced in the data centre, which captures the data centre heat and pre-heat fresh air to the building in winter, reducing the heating load by approximately 50%.
Emphasis has been placed on the utilisation of natural day lighting, with artificial lighting activated only as and when required.
During the evenings, lighting is controlled automatically in the office, public, service and circulation areas to ensure that lighting is always available to those working late, but that lighting in all uninhabited areas are switched off.
Rainwater Harvesting
Incorporated into the design is the concept of rainwater harvesting. Rainwater from surface parking and on the soft landscaped northern end of the site is channelled to subsurface drains which will reroute the water to the southern end of the building and then release it slowly back into the wetland via silt traps and French drains. This ensures that the wetland will continue to grow and eventually thrive.
Similarly, rainwater from the roof slabs will be channelled via full-bore outlets to an attenuation dam on the southern end of the site, where it is used for the irrigation of the landscaping.
To further limit the reliance on potable water for irrigation of the landscaping, only indigenous planting has been chosen for the site.
The Arts
Telesure, in its effort to promote the arts, has begun discussions with the Spier Arts Foundation with a view to setting up an arts academy across this development and the adjoining Steyn City Development.
The academy will provide studio space, mentorship and training to young local artists from neighbouring communities, at the same time giving them a platform to showcase their work.
In the first step toward this very bold and commendable plan, Telesure is currently commissioning the multi-storey art piece in the core and providing gallery space on its floors for works by emerging and established artists.
Source (http://www.bigenafrica.com/news/article/SG22Z3J7Q2QGWLJX)
http://www.bigenafrica.com/Cms_Data/Contents/BigenDB/Media/news_images/telesure%20ext2.jpg
http://www.bigenafrica.com/Cms_Data/Contents/BigenDB/Media/news_images/telesure%20ext1.jpg
A new office development for Telesure Investment Holdings
12 Dec 2011
Bigen Africa has been contracted to provide all civil and structural engineering services for a prestigious 55 000 square-metre office development for Telesure Investment Holdings in Johannesburg.
The project, with a value of R410 million, will consolidate the company’s current business units in six separate buildings in Johannesburg and Pretoria. The new building comprises a main core area and two wings. One wing has a basement with two office floors and the other one has two basements and two office floors.
Telesure Investment Holdings is part of an international financial services group that houses leading insurance brands in South Africa, including Auto & General Insurance, Unity Insurance and Dial Direct Insurance, as well as insurance brokerages such as Budget Insurance Brokers and 1st for Women Insurance Brokers and life insurance provider 1Lifedirect.
“Telesure wanted a 24 000 m2 office building with substantial parking. They requested that the building allow for maximum flexibility in terms of the internal layout of the office floors, the ability to sub-let portions of the building, if necessary, and the ability to expand, should the need arise,” says Johann Human, Bigen Africa Technical Director.
Other factors considered in the design were efficient circulation of the 2 500 staff members with little reliance on elevators and an aesthetical building drawing on the classical principles of form and order while still representing the forward-thinking culture of a contemporary organisation.
Security, IT infrastructure, energy efficiency and economy were also all given high priority.
“In response to Telesure’s request for maximum flexibility, the building has been designed as four separate double-storey office blocks, all connected to a central public core which houses common functions,” says Johann.
The site for the new building is at the junction of the William Nicol Highway and the Helderfontein Spruit, a tributary of the Jukskei River, four kilometres north of Fourways and five south of Diepsloot. It is bordered to the west by Dainfern Estate, to the south by the river, to the west by William Nicol and to the north by the upcoming Steyn City development.
In terms of topography, the site is characterised by a steep North to South slope of approximately 25 metres, and several excavated pits that are the remnants of sand mining that took place years ago.
The aggressive fall across the site and the concentrated storm water run-off along the eastern boundary has led to the lower regions of the site developing an early wetland character.
The outstanding feature of the site is undoubtedly a particularly attractive section of river and flood plain.
Each of the four office blocks consists of two levels of open-plan office space, effectively creating eight separate office plates of approximately 2 600 m2 each, and the possibility of eight separate addresses, should the need arise.
Each office plate is flanked to the south by a patio that overlooks the wetland, to the east and west by services pods and to the north by a circulation spine that links blocks to each other through the central core.
Adjacent to the circulation spine on the north side of each office plate are a series of alternating pause areas and light wells. The light wells extend through the office levels to the parking floors below to provide employees with daylight and natural ventilation.
On the upper block, the light wells will be planted with indigenous trees that provide partial shading to the full volume glass façade on the north during summer and lose their leaves in winter to allow heat into the offices.
On the lower block, the light wells will be planted with flower boxes suspended in the space to form a living “chandelier” that hangs between consecutive pause pods.
The central axes of the four office blocks are aligned East-West which unlocks a two-fold advantage. The first is to give the major facades a north and a south orientation to ensure that the building will perform optimally with regards to natural lighting and thermal performance. The second advantage is that the buildings follow the natural contours of the site.
The southern block is two storeys below the two northern blocks ensuring that all eight office halls have a direct view towards the river and wetland. This reduces the scale of the overall composition to blend in with the predominantly residential fabric of the site’s surrounds.
This orientation also means that the building is perfectly angled towards William Nicol to maximise exposure.
To avoid the wider than average width of the floor-plates, the floor-to-floor height of the office levels is substantially higher than the norm. This allows for maximum daylight penetration through full height glazing, and also enhances the feeling of openness and space.
The core is the connecting element between individual office blocks and the parking levels below. It is essentially an indoor piazza on two levels.
The upper entrance level houses the main reception and security, smaller formal and informal meeting rooms and visitor’s lounge areas. The lower piazza level houses the staff canteen, coffee shop, wellness centre, gymnasium and staff lounges.
Directly attached to the core is a free-standing conference centre that houses the larger conference and meeting rooms and the executive office suites.
The conference pod “floats” over a reflection pond to the side of the main entrance, while the executive office pod floats above the canteen and the outdoor piazza on the level below.
Unlike the office blocks, the core is not aligned to acknowledge the contours, but rather to take advantage of a very scenic bend in the river below, whilst simultaneously allowing for direct east and west daylight penetration into its space.
The main entrance is approached from the gatehouse via a dramatic porte-cochere roof over the drop-off area that features an integrated cascading water feature.
This roof over-sails the core from its origin in the north to its termination beyond the southern façade, where it is supported by two giant glass clad columns which metaphorically suggests fibre optic cables which are the actual conductors of the business.
The porte-cochere roof itself is symbolic of the arrow in the Telesure logo, and is representative of progress and technological advancement.
The elliptically shaped core is an impressive, powerful space, 30m wide and 90m long, double volume at its northern entrance and four volumes high on the southern end.
The off-shutter finished concrete walls of the core are engineered to fully support its roof, thereby rendering the space completely column-free. Even the walkway bridges that link adjacent office blocks through the core space are engineered to span the core without column support.
Vertical transportation is positioned at the centre of the core to provide links to all office and floor levels via escalators, stairs and a bank of scenic lifts.
The lower piazza of the core will house an iconic three storey high artwork being created especially for the building by the Spier Art Foundation.
The piece will float dramatically from the western face of the wall, opposite the glass-clad executive offices that ‘cut’ through the concrete walls and into the core’s interior through a 30m-long opening.
Throughout the floors of the core, will be several other art pieces as yet to be created by young and emerging local artists under the guidance of the Spier Foundation.
Staff parking is housed below the four office blocks in three naturally ventilated and lit parking levels.
All parking levels will have direct access via two security-controlled entrances into the core. From any of the parking levels, staff will have to walk up a maximum of one floor to gain access to the core. Thereafter, employees all use a set of common escalators that will give them access to their respective office levels.
This eliminates the need for large numbers of lifts to move staff vertically and, in turn, presents huge energy and capital running-cost savings to the project. The limited lifts incorporated are purely for paraplegic access and for service use.
IMPACT OF THE DEVELOPMENT
Job Creation
As part of the construction of the building, a database of all available local labour from the neighbouring communities of Diepsloot and Cosmo City has been set up, and the building’s contractor has, from the first week of construction, begun employing people from this database.
Telesure foresees that much of their future call-centre recruitments will come from these upcoming communities, as well as from the bordering Steyn City and Helderfontein Estate developments.
Road Upgrades
As part of the development of the site, the existing William Nicol Road from Fourways up to the site is to be upgraded to dual carriageways in both directions with a new quarter-link exchange at the site. This will substantially alleviate the current congestion between Broadacres Road and Fourways, and provide much-needed relief to local residents.
Staff Motoring
In order to reduce harmful carbon emissions arising from motoring, Telesure will implement a system that encourages the use of public transportation instead of private motoring, by providing a free shuttle service from the nearby Fourways and Diepsloot transport nodes to a dedicated public transport node to be developed on the site.
Local Telephony and Data
In an effort to enhance the current infrastructure to the area, Telesure has agreed to house a Telkom exchange on site that will boost Telkom’s capacity in the area and assist with growth as future developments materialise.
Waste Recycling
Other initiatives by Telesure include a waste recycling centre on site that educates and encourages staff to recycle glass, paper, plastic, light bulbs, batteries and so forth.
Wetland and River
The development incorporates plans to firstly rehabilitate the existing fledgling wetland to pristine condition and thereafter maintain the wetland and the portion of river that fronts onto the site.
From the onset of the project, the architects worked with an environmental consultant and the City of Johannesburg’s environmental management department to ensure that the adjoining wetland is treated with importance and care.
A full study of the wetland was generated and documented and, following several design meetings with the city, the building was repositioned and redesigned until it was well above the agreed wetland delineation line, with a substantial buffer zone between the two.
A site-specific environmental management plan was created that outlined how groundwater, flora and fauna would be protected both during and after construction to ensure that the impact of the development would be minimal.
In addition, the developer has undertaken to use only indigenous landscaping within the site and to plant the roofs of the lower blocks to create a green roof of nearly 5 000m2, which reduces the net impact of the development of the site.
Energy Efficiency
In response to the energy crisis facing South Africa, it was decided that the development would be as energy efficient as possible.
Architecturally, the building is thermally treated to reduce the cooling and heating load by way of a landscaped and insulated concrete roof, double glazing on the full-height south facades and single performance glazing on the north facades.
A number of energy-efficient features in the design of the air-conditioning system ensures that the building’s impact on the environment is reduced, while also creating a more healthy and comfortable environment for the occupants.
The cooling and heating system is optimised in terms of equipment selection and operating conditions and is constantly controlled and monitored by a computerised building management system.
An economy cycle increases the outside air up to 100% when outdoor temperatures are moderate.
The data centre cooling is done by a Kyoto cooling system which maintains conditions in the data centre for 87% of the time without any mechanical cooling, making it the most efficient cooling system available.
In addition, a heat recovery cycle is introduced in the data centre, which captures the data centre heat and pre-heat fresh air to the building in winter, reducing the heating load by approximately 50%.
Emphasis has been placed on the utilisation of natural day lighting, with artificial lighting activated only as and when required.
During the evenings, lighting is controlled automatically in the office, public, service and circulation areas to ensure that lighting is always available to those working late, but that lighting in all uninhabited areas are switched off.
Rainwater Harvesting
Incorporated into the design is the concept of rainwater harvesting. Rainwater from surface parking and on the soft landscaped northern end of the site is channelled to subsurface drains which will reroute the water to the southern end of the building and then release it slowly back into the wetland via silt traps and French drains. This ensures that the wetland will continue to grow and eventually thrive.
Similarly, rainwater from the roof slabs will be channelled via full-bore outlets to an attenuation dam on the southern end of the site, where it is used for the irrigation of the landscaping.
To further limit the reliance on potable water for irrigation of the landscaping, only indigenous planting has been chosen for the site.
The Arts
Telesure, in its effort to promote the arts, has begun discussions with the Spier Arts Foundation with a view to setting up an arts academy across this development and the adjoining Steyn City Development.
The academy will provide studio space, mentorship and training to young local artists from neighbouring communities, at the same time giving them a platform to showcase their work.
In the first step toward this very bold and commendable plan, Telesure is currently commissioning the multi-storey art piece in the core and providing gallery space on its floors for works by emerging and established artists.
Source (http://www.bigenafrica.com/news/article/SG22Z3J7Q2QGWLJX)