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The bustling 1,000-acre Bandar Utama township in Petaling Jaya is especially known for its award-winning five million sq ft retail haven, 1 Utama Shopping Centre. Just a stone’s throw away from the mall is the newly completed 1 First Avenue office tower built by developer Bandar Utama City Sdn Bhd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bandar Utama developer See Hoy Chan Holdings Group.
1 First Avenue, the winner of The Edge-PAM Green Excellence Award 2011, stands out for a number of reasons. It is next to One World Hotel, integrated with 1 Utama Shopping Centre and boasts numerous green features one might not be aware of by merely looking at the building.
It became the first private-sector commercial building to receive the Green Building Index (GBI) Provisional Certification in April 2010. And while the building looks like any other modern Grade A office building, one would be pleasantly surprised to find that about 50% of the rooftop has been covered with native and adaptive plants, and that the development has a total landscaped area of more than 50%.
In addition, 1 First Avenue is also an MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) Malaysia Cybercentre-status building within the Bandar Utama city centre, where tenants are eligible to enjoy various incentives provided for information communication technology (ICT) companies.
The building received the jury’s vote as the winner of The Edge-PAM Green Excellence Award 2011 as it was deemed an exemplary commercial building that went beyond just exhibiting green technologies.
We met the man behind the development, Datuk Teo Chiang Kok, director of See Hoy Chan Holdings Group, at the ground level terrace near the entrance of the building, where we noticed the beginnings of the vertical garden featuring a climber plant known as a peacock flower (bauhinia kockiana). The vertical garden will grow from the ground floor to the top of the 25-storey tower, and will probably look lush and impressive when it matures.
The ground terrace features a landscaped walkway. “We asked the authorities if we could provide a landscaped walkway instead of the typical pedestrian paths. It’s safer for the pedestrians and it also acts as a green relief for the area. Hopefully people would sit here in the afternoon to have a cup of tea or something,” says Teo as he led us down the shady path.
On each floor of the building, there is a landscaped terraced (garden) area where office workers can take some time out to relax, have a drink or meet for discussions. On every alternate floor, there are more green areas growing under double volume-height ceilings that allow better air movement and for taller trees to grow. Teo says they only use local plants.
“You don’t need exotic plants to make things look beautiful and local plants won’t have any problems adapting,” he points out.
Commenting on the offices, Teo says, “We offer big spaces for offices [floor plates] as it reduces inter-floor travelling and offices are more efficiently used. I think teamwork development is also better when everyone is on the same floor.”
As for conserving water, rainwater collected via a rainwater harvesting system will be used for flushing toilets, cooling towers and landscaping. Teoh says 30% of total water usage for the building comes from recycled rainwater.
The building is said to have cutting-edge cost-cutting technologies to improve energy efficiency, including intelligent and highly efficient lifts, low e-glazing windows, a chiller plant control system, a building energy-management system control, and monitoring and integration of equipment. Toilets are also naturally ventilated and lit during the day.
The efficiency features cost the developer 18% more than the usual building cost.
“A lot of multinational companies (MNCs) have their corporate social responsibility (CSR) which requires them to be environmentally conscious so they are looking to have their offices in green buildings.
“It’s good timing for us — we came at a time when MNCs were looking for such offices,” says Teo. 1 First Avenue, which was completed in April last year, is fully leased. In fact, the building was 90% full within six months, testimony to the high demand for green buildings by MNCs. The building has a total gross built-up of 2.3 million sq ft and a net lettable area of 637,258 sq ft. Its tenants include IBM Malaysia (which is also a tenant at 8 First Avenue), RHB Bank Bhd, MyEG Services Sdn Bhd, Paypal Malaysia Services Sdn Bhd and Hong Leong Investment Bank Bhd.
Teo has almost four decades of experience in property development and has been adopting green initiatives and technologies in some of the buildings in Bandar Utama. Green elements have also been included in the master plan for Bandar Utama city centre.
“I remember following my father [Tan Sri Dr Teo Soo Cheng] to construction sites when I was maybe 15 or 16 years old. While we had other businesses besides property development then, this [property] industry excites me most as it is both creative and tangible,” he says.
Green initiatives
The developer had been known for its green initiatives before being green became trendy. For instance, 1 Utama Shopping Centre has adopted green features such as district cooling via a central plant and a “green lung” in its Rainforest section for years. It also included a rooftop garden at its new wing recently.
“It is not so altruistic. Right from the start, we decided we wanted to keep the commercial section of the township as long-term rental properties and by being efficient, we would receive payback in the long run. By incorporating efficient features and as long as the payback period was within six years or less, it was a go,” says Teo.
“In the past, there were no green ratings but when the rating tools were introduced, we made sure we achieved the standards,” he adds. At first, the developer followed the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification guideline, a rating system devised by the US Green Building Council and then switched to GBI once it was introduced.
“The switch from LEED to GBI was because LEED was designed for projects in temperate countries so some of the criteria were not so relevant in Malaysia. If we spent money just to meet the criteria, it could be wasted,” explains Teo.
Another interesting green feature in 1 First Avenue is the green vehicle parking lot allocations. Tenants are encouraged to drive green hybrid vehicles and those who do so and fulfil a few other terms and conditions will enjoy a 50% discount on parking rates and have the best parking bay allocations in the development. There is also a 50% discount and specially allocated parking bays for those who carpool.
“We need to adopt various options to achieve or exceed the Green Building Index. The option to do so, however, must first and foremost make commercial sense,” says Teo.
An unusual initiative that Bandar Utama has adopted is the central sewage treatment plant that processes all sewage and food waste and recovers up to 95% or more of the water used in the area. Wastewater recycling involves wastewater treatment, where greywater is reused for toilet flushing, air-conditioning cooling towers and landscape irrigation.
“We also recover condensate water from the air-conditioning to extract the ‘coldness’ in the condensate for pre-cooling the air,” Teo elaborates.
We visited the sky lounge next. It spans 25,000 sq ft with stunning views of the surrounding areas. Teo says they are still looking for a tenant for the sky lounge.
We then proceeded to the helipad and were stunned by the breathtaking view — unimpeded 360-degree views of Bandar Utama and its surrounding areas. While it was a hazy day, one could imagine having cocktail parties on the helipad on a clear evening. Teo says the helipad, about 18,600 sq ft in size, is able to accommodate a 20-seater helicopter, and offers views of Kuala Lumpur and even Genting Highlands on a clear day.
Interestingly, the helipad in the building is not your typical concrete helipad but one laid with grass. “[Our] greening the helipad is, we believe, the first undertaken anywhere. We can’t landscape a helipad, we can only put grass on it as it has to be flat.
“We see helicopters landing on a padang so we gathered that we didn’t need concrete helipads. We then decided that we might as well make a [green helipad] and that’s how the concept came about,” explains Teo.
Having a turf-roof deck on top of a building not only looks refreshing and makes the area ideal for holding events. It also helps alleviate urban heat island effects through evaporative shading. In other words, the cow grass planted on the helipad cools the building. The helipad, however, has yet to be used as it is pending approval by the Department of Civil Aviation.
There are about six more commercial buildings being planned for future development in Bandar Utama and Teo says 1 First Avenue has set the benchmark for green buildings here. “Now we’ve reached a certain standard, we can’t step back, unfortunately,” he jokes.
This article appeared in City & Country, the property pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 878, Oct 3-9, 2011
