The most sustainable office building conceived and constructed to date has recently opened in London.
Designed by renowned British architects Foster + Partners as the London headquarters for
financial and media giant Bloomberg, the vast office has pushed the boundaries of sustainable building design.
Here we find out how this extremely green office was created.
Spread over a 3.2 acre site in central London, Bloomberg’s £1BN new office building consists
of over 1.1 million square feet of commercial and retail space and will bring the company’s 4,000
London-based employees under one roof for the first time.
Actually two buildings, the development is made up of a pair of triangular-blocks
connected by bridges that span over a pedestrian avenue.
That walkway follows the route of an ancient Roman road that historically ran through the site.
The building is an impressive addition to the London streetscape, but it is the sustainable
thinking that runs throughout this facility that is perhaps even more impressive.
Both the architect, Norman Foster, and the client, Michael Bloomberg, agreed early in the building’s
gestation that the new headquarters would incorporate the highest standards of sustainable building design.
According to Foster the "project evolved from thereon into a building that is one of the most sustainable in the world."
In fact according to BREEAM, which is the world’s most widely used method for evaluating
and certifying the environmental impact of the built environment,
this is the most sustainable commercial building ever built.
BREEAM gave the building an Outstanding rating, scoring it at 98.5% against its criteria;
the highest design-stage BREEAM score ever achieved by a major office development.
While the building responds to its historic context, it is a true exemplar of sustainable development.
Overall Bloomberg’s office will see a 35% reduction in energy consumption
compared to a typical office of the same size.
This has been achieved by focusing on innovative solutions in four principal areas: ventilation, lighting, power and water.
Perhaps the most visible of these strategies externally is ventilation.
The building’s distinctive bronze blades serve two purposes.
Firstly, to shade the floor-to-ceiling glazing,
and secondary, as an integral part of a natural ventilation system.
Vents in the fins can be opened and closed according to the weather,
pulling air through the office spaces into the atrium and out of the roof in form of “stack” system.
Smart sensors can then adjust airflow, with the system expected to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 300 tonnes a year.
Lighting is provided by some 500,000 LEDs that use around 40% less energy than traditional lighting.
These LEDs are contained within integrated ceiling panels that also combine heating,
cooling and acoustics in an elegant and innovative petal leaf design.
Unusually the Bloomberg building has its own power generation plant on site,
generating electricity from natural gas.
As the company are generating the power themselves, they own the waste heat that is created.
This waste will be used to heat the building in winter,
while in the summer it will drive an absorption chiller to circulate chilled water around the facility.
Bloomberg expect to see a 73% reduction in water consumption as compared to a typical office building.
Rainwater harvested from the roof, cooling tower blow-off water, and water from grey water sources
such as the sinks and showers will treated and recycled to serve vacuum flush toilets.
These toilets, similar to those found on airplanes, will use about a quarter of the water of a regular toilet.
Overall, water conservation systems will save 25 million litres of water each year,
enough to fill ten Olympic-sized swimming pools.
These features, along with many others, have led to the creation of the world’s most sustainable office building to date,
and designers hope that many of the innovative systems employed
on this project will become standard practice on other offices in the future.
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