Johannesburg - There are workplaces, and then there are workplaces. Some of Joburg’s corporate offices resemble 5-star hotels, with eateries to match. Bar putting your bed in there, you could pretty much live at these offices. Some even have cocktail bars, trees, cutting-edge art works, shower facilities, indoor bike sheds and a concierge.
The most idyllic offices are mostly also “green” buildings, which means their architecture is curvaceous to fit in with the environment, allowing as much natural light in as possible, and they are energy efficient, with electricity-saving lighting and water recycling systems in place.
From the outside, most of South Africa’s green-rated buildings – among them Nedbank and Alexander Forbes in Sandton, and the No.1 Silo building in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront – don’t particularly stand out, and in fact some of them look like squat bunkers. But step inside and it’s a different world.
A primary example is Standard Bank in Rosebank, an ambitious project that drew some consternation during its development due to its extensive glass curtain walls, which offer panoramic views of the city at all its levels.
As you walk into its cavernous lobby, you are in a vast piazza featuring an atrium with trees and a hanging sculpture of Africa called Seed by Marco Cianfanelli.
Turn left and there’s a bar that serves coffee or alcohol after hours, and a superb food court run by top-drawer caterers, Word of Mouth. You can lunch in there or book a table at the à la carte restaurant a few feet away, or even in one of the glassed-off private meeting rooms that run alongside it. If you’re working late, you can get a pre-packed dinner from one of the fridges in the food court.
On each level – themed in its own colour – there are high-backed, soundproof booths close to a coffee bar, to give you some privacy if you need it. And outside balconies of course.
It all overlooks a rugby-sized urban garden with 422 trees, indigenous flower gardens and lawn areas. A wide tree-lined boulevard provides a shaded walk from Baker Street to the main entrance lobby, complemented by one of the longest linear water features in Joburg, with granite rocks recycled from a quarry.
“Every light in the building is linked to sensors linked to computers that dim the lights when there’s more natural light, and brighten them on a cloudy day. At night, when no one aside from the guards are there, it is dark. And the elevators slow down when there’s no foot traffic,” says Rob Gravette, head of project management.
The most impressive feat, though, is the way light and heat are controlled through the “glass curtain wall”, which covers more than 65 percent of the vertical exteriors. “It’s triple glazed with a built-in dehumidifying system, and has remotely activated shading blinds. The blinds can be retracted into a framing system, so you don’t see them on a clear day,” says Gravette.
This Standard Bank is public-friendly – “There is no cash kept here, so security is present but not visible,” says Gravette – so it has gathered a sizeable lunching crowd mixing with the bank’s employees. It’s like spending an afternoon in a world-class airport lounge, which it sort of doubles up as for travelling clients as the Rosebank Gautrain station is just across the road. There’s also a concierge, and a car washer.
The 5 000-odd employees who work there can count themselves privileged.
I also visited the two-tower Ernst & Young (EY) headquarters in Rivonia Road, across the road from Sandton’s Gautrain station and, again, it’s a green building with a light-filled, curvaceous interior with striking vertical views through glass walls.
“EY’s vision here was to create a rich and holistic experience to attract great people and potential leaders. It’s the workplace of the future,” says Grahame Cruickshanks, manager of climate change and sustainability services.
The reception area boasts a long, subtly -lit vertical “garden” underpinned by a line of contemporary yellow bucket seats. Again, indoor trees are dotted around in plant beds next to seating booths. Look upwards and there’s a twirling matrix of escalators and walkways to the numerous colour-coded meeting rooms in the building.
Word of Mouth catering also runs the canteen here, and makes an excellent Banting meal every day for the many employees following the low-cal lifestyle.
Vida e Caffè provides a coffee bar adjoining a wide balcony with state-of-the-art outdoor furniture, overlooking the east side of Sandton.
Green buildings like these cost about 10 percent more to construct than other buildings, but as utility costs rise, they will make back the investment.
And green buildings, which also include Vodafone in Midrand, DStv City in Randburg, MTN in Fairland and Absa in the Joburg CBD, are fuelling a strong trend in industries providing materials, so Plascon now sells a low volatile organic compound paint.
Cape Town’s No.1 Silo building, which houses Allan Gray’s new headquarters, leads the pack with South Africa’s only 6-star green building grading.
It not only features a double-skin glass façade but an advanced cooling system that uses cold Atlantic seawater to cool the building.
Heat from the IT server room provides underfloor heating in the reception area.
No.1 Silo also includes electric-car charging points in the basement, low-flow water fittings and a private roof garden.
A prerogative of all these buildings is to reduce water wastage, so waste water from hand washbasins and showers is collected and treated within a grey water system (water from sinks, showers, baths or washing machines) and reused for flushing water in toilets.
The next green, eat-your-heart-out place of work is to be Sasol’s new headquarters in Katherine Street, Sandton, for 3 000 to 4 000 employees. It is due to open in the second half of 2016, and it looks like an enormous, 10-storey, glass-walled amoeba.
Standard Bank’s Gravette says: “It’s about providing a lifestyle, a lovely environment in which to work and also take time out. Corporates looking to draw the best people increasingly need to think about this, because workers nowadays are highly mobile and are putting in longer hours than ever.”
As I leave the Standard Bank building I’m wondering how I can become a banker, because the real world is a bit of a jolt after a few hours in its idyllic womb.
Helen Grange, The Star