Electric Road Office Project

The existing Newton Hotel at North Point will be redeveloped into a Grade A office tower, temporarily named the Electric Road Office Project. The design principle was to become a technologically advanced architecture and strive to achieve harmony between the people, city and environment with a backbone of quantifiable benefits.

The Electric Road Office Project consists of a 22-storey office tower with two storeys of retail shops, one storey of podium garden and two storeys of basement car park. This project aims to achieve the highest grading for three Green design certifications: LEED Platinum certification, BEAM Plus Platinum and CGBL 3-Stars. As urban people—especially white collars—spend most of their time in air-conditioned offices, indoor environment is one of the key factors affecting their health. Architectural design becomes the key parameter of the quality of indoor environment and energy savings.

The aim of the Electric Road Office Project is to build a healthy and Green office. To achieve this objective, natural ventilation, a balance between natural light and shading, as well as urban connectivity were incorporated into the planning and design.

INTRODUCING NATURAL VENTILATION
Natural ventilation can help to alleviate the problem of workers in the same office getting sick together during peak seasons of influenza, which is quite common in Hong Kong. The wind catchers integrated with spandrel improve the ventilation of the building. Operable windows installed with window actuators are provided for both office buildings. Statistics of the external temperature and humidity will be sent to tenants through the Intelligent Building Management System, especially in autumn and winter. This design reduces the chances of recirculation of contaminated air by bringing fresh air into the workspaces. It also reduces the cooling load and thus enhances energy savings. The nuisance of noise disturbance inside the office can be minimised by controlling wind velocity.

BALANCE BETWEEN NATURAL LIGHT AND SHADING
Natural sunlight helps to reduce energy consumption, in addition to providing a pleasant working environment, although too much direct sunlight will increase solar heat gain and burden the cooling load of the building.

Specific strategies are implemented according to sun direction and site path at different locations. For example, at the northwest corner where the maximum amount of sunlight is received, the sunshading features extend outwards and downwards to help mitigate the solar heat gain in the afternoon sun without affecting the view from the office.

At the southwest corner where sunlight penetration is blocked by the surrounding buildings, vision panels are maximised to allow for more daylight transmission to the interiors. In comparison to the conventional design, it can achieve an annual reduction of 750 operation hours of artificial lighting.

URBAN CONNECTIVITY
Connection and integration with the urban context of the surrounding area is one of the most important considerations. The disposition of the tower, together with the adjacent developments, allows a view corridor as well as natural ventilation for the district.

Repaving of pavements and driveways, increasing on-grade greening and introducing street art are some of the proposals to improve the living and working environment by beautifying the lot.

The approach of this project is to bring out the potential of a new development to add value: to the client through higher revenue or lower cost; to the environment through energy savings and remediation; as well as to the end-users and society as a whole through amenities and urban renewal.