The Site The site has quite a steep gradient with a fall of 14m over the length. The design of the buildings has to follow the slope and as such it was a challenge to not have basement parking levels dominate the aesthetic. Tiered landscaping was used to minimise the extent of the visible parking level to foster buildings that are part of the landscape. It was also quite challenging to have a contextual street relation as the buildings are separated by a see-through fence. The client acknowledged the importance of street activation or rather street frontage and allowed Building A at the main entrance not to have a fence separation between the sidewalk and the building.
Considered security measures within the ground floor design of Building A had to be implemented to ensure a secure and safe environment while still having the building as part of the sidewalk. The site placement of the buildings in terms of levels as well as creating pockets of planting on suspended slabs tries to increase the landscaped areas to the maximum.
Façade The façades comprise masonry cavity walls with Versus Textured Plaster, single and double glazed unitised aluminium façades as well as external horizontal and vertical steel screens for creepers.
WSP Building C which houses WSP, is built over 6,300m on a three level basement superstructure for both buildings A and C. The U-shaped building is accessible from the Basement level-1 on the eastern façade with
lobbies fronting onto street level. These lobbies, as well as the cyclist facility were placed at the eastern portion of the basement level to activate the eastern vehicular street. On the ground floor level, entrance into the building is via the landscaped courtyard into a three level atrium. The building was designed with two vertical circulation cores to ensure maximum future flexibility in terms of sub-tenants. The building has 330 parking bays.
As the anchor tenant for the first phase of the redevelopment project, WSP played a pivotal role in the design of not only the company’ s own new building, but the layout and planning of the precinct. For the construction of their new HQ building, the company provided a full host of design consulting services – across civil, structural, mechanical, electrical and electronic, plumbing, fire and sustainability – and worked closely with the architect, project manager, quantity surveyor and full construction team, which resulted in a better coordinated outcome.
3D / Virtual Reality In the early design phase, WSP used its 3-dimensional( 3D) assets to design an immersive, gamified, virtual reality( VR) rendering of the planned redevelopment for the precinct and a detailed rendering for the company’ s building.
Once the detailed rendering of the new HQ was completed, WSP were able to host 3D coordination sessions. This not only enabled the collective project team to ensure that the design process was done thoroughly, but also to identify any potential problems or snags early on in the design phases- and take
48 WSP Knightsbridge