Mark Anthony Breis - EMCON Tower

Here's the Thesis Project of Mark Anthony Breis of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) who bagged the Top Thesis Award for 2012.

The main design concept of the project is a high performance building design encapsulated with characteristic of being ecological, innovative and responsive, towards high performance building design elements such as sustainable site, energy efficiency, water efficiency, good indoor environmental quality and sustainable and low impact materials.

The project site is located at Bonifacio Global City with a total area of 6, 539 sq. mts. The architectural top height of the tower is 212.90 meters from natural ground line. With the total of 60 floors, it is a mixed use development made up of commercial center at ground floor, Class A leasable office units for BPO-ICT industry in the podium blocks A & B and residential units with amenity level at the main tower. Total no. of lifts are 13, 4 are for office podium blocks A & B with one freight elevator in each block and 6 lifts for residential tower, strategically divided for low zone, high zone and royal penthouse areas with one freight elevator.

EMCON (Efficiency Minus the CONsumption)
The skyscraper is designed with the utmost consideration of using renewable energies from nature’s passive forces such as solar and wind, reducing its consumption of fossil fuel energy by approximately 16% (Other energy efficiency measures excluded in the estimated percentage).

From Negative Image Comes a Positive Geometry
For an efficient capturing of renewable energy, the tower’s plan shape is designed aerodynamically for two reasons, one is for wind load reduction and the other is to create a wind tunnel in both sides towards the direction of prevailing winds, creating a shape similar to the shape of a typhoon, which is the eminent character of climate change effects in the Philippines. The shape of the plan also provides a naturally ventilated double skin envelope with horizontal strut support at south oriented façade.

Forms Inspired by the Local Context
Forms and character of the building is also derived from the local context. The office podium’s façade is inspired with the Philippines’ art of weaving. It is made up of tempered glass with low e coatings and ceramic fritted glass, alternately arranged that creates the weave like pattern. This kind of facade greatly reduces heat gain, thus decreasing cooling loads of AC system in office podium. On the other hand, the tower’s curving façade is inspired by the sails of “balangay”, which is the ancient boat of the Philippines.




Large screen viewing setup HERE

If you also have an interesting thesis project to showcase here, just e-mail me (raegab@yahoo.com) the files and I will convert it to flash files for viewing here.