Bee’ah's new HQ building to come up on a 90,000-sq-m site
in Sharjah.
Zaha Hadid to design Bee’ah headquarters
SHARJAH, December 23, 2014
Bee’ah, a leading fully integrated environmental and waste management company in the Middle East, has signed up Zaha Hadid Architects to design its new 7,000-sq-m headquarters building in Sharjah, UAE.
The facility will come up on a 90,000-sq-m site adjacent to the Bee’ah Waste Management Centre. The large site enabled the development of the design as an array of dunes within its desert landscape leading to the two central dunes of the headquarters building.
The new headquarters building is part of Bee’ah’s ongoing investment to transform attitudes and behaviours in individuals, communities, businesses and cities by providing the infrastructure, tools and support to achieve their environmental goals, said a statement from the firm.
Bee’ah said the building has been designed with environmental considerations woven into every
aspect of the design using a hierarchical approach to first limit the need to consume resources;
where resources are required - to minimise their consumption; and finally to offset consumption of
resources through the harvesting of renewable systems.
Zaha Hadid Architects said the project has been designed in response to its natural environment to provide comfort for visitors and staff alongside minimising energy and resource consumption.
Tthe formal composition of the new Bee’ah headquarters building resonates with its desert context as a series of intersecting dunes orientated to optimise the prevailing Shamal winds, and designed to provide its interiors with high quality daylight and views whilst limiting the quantity of glazing exposed to the harsh sun, said the architects.
The two primary dunes of the Bee’ah headquarters house the public and management section
(entrance lobby, auditorium, visitors’ education centre and gallery, and management offices) and
the administrative section (departmental offices and staff café), they stated.
The two dunes intersect and connect via a central courtyard that forms an ‘oasis’ inside the building - enhancing the natural ventilation and maximising indirect sunlight to the public and administrative spaces within, said Zaha Hadid Architects.
The building systems of the new headquarters have been developed in conjunction with Atelier Ten
to minimise both the energy required for cooling and the need for potable water consumption. In
milder months, the façade is operable to allow natural ventilation - minimising the need to provide
cooling to the building.
When conditioning is required, it will be optimised for energy conservation via the use of ventilation energy recovery - allowing fresh air into the spaces with reduced energy impact, and the waste heat that would normally be rejected from the chillers into the atmosphere is to be harvested to provide free pre-heating of the domestic hot water supplies, it stated.
The exterior finishes of the building have been selected to reflect the sun’s rays and help to further
reduce energy consumption by providing a local heat profile that is akin to the natural desert
environment (rather than the high heat profiles associated with conventional roofing systems), said the company.
These active and passive energy approaches are calculated to reduce energy consumption by 30 per cent, it added.
All power required for the building will be generated via low and zero carbon sources, principally
from the adjacent Bee’ah Waste Management Centre’s conversion of municipal waste (that would
otherwise decay in landfill) into energy, together with large arrays of photovoltaic cells incorporated
within the site’s landscaping.
According to Bee’ah, the building’s structure has been developed in conjunction with Buro Happold to minimise material consumption through architectural and structural integration.
Individual elements of the building’s structure and skin are of standard orthogonal dimensions, enabling significant portions to be constructed from materials recovered from the local construction and demolition waste streams managed by Bee’ah, minimising demand for new materials.
Bee’ah’s expertise and experience of recovered water recycling for non-potable use has enabled the design to be developed for exceptionally low potable water consumption. Internal fixtures and fittings will be installed to conserve water to exceptional levels.
Native or adaptive species of vegetation will be incorporated to minimise the need for irrigation, with recovered and recycled non-potable water being used where irrigation is required and landscaping, it added.
Bee’ah said the new building is defined by the principles that are the foundation of the company’s mission to provide integrated environmental and waste management services to meet the future challenges of its community.
Bee’ah is leading by example in creating a work environment that continues its commitment to deliver coherent and sustainable environmental solutions, it added.-TradeArabia News Service