wpp campus são paulo | competition

HOW WE IMAGINE THE SÃO PAULO WPP CAMPUS

We know that the main goal of WPP Campus São Paulo is to inaugurate a qualified occupation of Vila Leopoldina as a new center for innovation and creativity in the city. Thus, we believe that it should be thought of as a destination in the city: an iconic building, with a strong image and qualified urban insertion, with wide green, public and open areas, meeting the most strict environmental, constructive and use requirements to provide an inspiring experience for all its inhabitants – permanent or temporary.

What we present here is a starting point to feed our dialogue, in order to allow that the final solutions, especially the construction of the image and the ambience of the spaces, can be carefully elaborated based on the expectations of WPP for this new destination and their experiences on different campuses around the world.

Urban insertion: redesigning the image of Vila Leopoldina

The urban insertion aims at reinforcing the uniqueness of the building through a volume that is both simple and sophisticated in design, highlighting its presence in the urban landscape as a symbol that inaugurates the region’s transformation process. The detachment of the building in relation to its neighbors, made through the creation of an internal street for vehicle and pedestrian access, reduces its impacts on road circulation and allows all facades to be designed in a continuous and integrated way, characterizing the building as an icon and preserving its autonomy in relation to the future transformation of the surroundings. The upper volume enhances the elements of solar attenuation to characterize the image of a building of great expressive strength, through translucent plates that surround the entire building, blurring the usual differentiation between front and back facades.

The strategic location of the main access facing the internal street contributes to the improvement of retail spaces and avoids conflict with the urban structure and other uses in the surroundings. It also allows organizing the different flows and accesses in a comfortable and secure way: main public access to the lobby; loading and unloading; cyclists; parking; building services, deliveries and administration. The detachment of the main built volume also favors pedestrian access along the entire urban front and allows pedestrian sheltered and safe circulation throughout all the length of retail front on the ground level – active facade – which takes advantage of the external areas as an extension of the stores to create a qualified plaza.

The current use and occupation law defines the level of the ground floor up to the height limit of 1 meter above the average level of the street. However, considering the floodable condition of the area, we recommend, during the licensing process of the building, an increment in the level of the ground floor to be negociated, as there is legal provision in Article 61 of Law No. 16,402, of March 22, 2016, which disciplines the land parceling, use and occupation in São Paulo.

Experiencing the building: environmental quality and spatial variety

The spatial organization starts from a creative interpretation of the typical floor plan of corporate buildings, which concentrates circulation and infrastructures in a central core, wrapped by the working areas. Departing from this standard, we propose the increment of two new features that blur its rigidity and expand the possibilities of use and transformation of spaces, enhancing user experiences:

1 – the inclusion of the parking lot in the center of the infrastructural core, vertically developed together with the working areas, generates a desirable continuity on the floors that considers, throughout the life of the building and with an approach to reducing the use of cars, the possibility of transforming part of the garage areas into additional complementary spaces to the working areas with great simplicity. The incorporation of parking lots in the center of the infrastructural core also avoids the incovenient characterization of an annex-like multi-storey car park, resulting in savings by reducing the demand for facade finishes and by sharing vertical circulation with the working areas, properly segregated by fire doors;

2 – the detachment of the infrastructural core from the working areas, through the creation of an interior garden – the canyon -, doubles the openings of the working spaces, that usually faces only the outer facade in standard corporate buildings. The insertion of an unexpected internal landscape introduces an urban character to the daily users’ experience, allowing to alternate air-conditioned places – workspaces – and non-air-conditioned spaces – walkways and perimetral circulation in the core. It also offers crossed views among workspaces and between them and the terraced circulation walkway and the open staircases that offer shortcuts between the floors. These open staircases contribute to reduce of the use of elevators and provide more integration among different workgroups.

Given the large floor area, the concentration of vertical circulation in a single core was avoided, splitting the flow into four elevator cores, what allows, at the reception desk, to clearly and calmly guide the public to the various destinations within the campus. It also allows different companies to coexist on the same floor, with functional independence and physical proximity, enhancing the synergy among groups of employees through casual encounters stimulated by the sharing of the spaces of the central core. The accesses to the four vertical circulation cores are at the ground level through a terraced path alongside the interior garden, in a qualified walkway that avoids the excessively formal character of the closed circulation of typical corporate buildings. This route is also animated by the visual integration between retail and the garden, offering internal showcases that form a diversified backdrop, bringing urban life to the interior space.

At the ground level, under the parking area, a convention structure offers enough space for an auditorium for 400 people and four flexible multipurpose rooms for more than 200 people and its own foyer, with direct access from the lobby, sharing public use toilets. Its location is strategic to allow sharing among group companies, other tenants and the external public. The spatial organization of this set can be designed in different ways, according to the character intended for the space, from an acoustically insulated auditorium – more rigorous demand from a technical point of view -, to more flexible and open organizations, with open bleachers and flexible floor plans with more subtle partitions. The variety of indoor heights in this sector – from 5.80 to 9.00 meters – improves a future development of multiple spatial dispositions, in tune with the expectations and demands of WPP.

Three of the four elevator cores have controlled access at the ground level and one of them have controlled access each floor in order to provide the segregation of controls with independence for parking areas and rooftop, allowing events to happen without compromising the safety of the working areas. Dimensioned for 13 passengers each, the four elevators of this fourth core can provide comfortable access to independent events on the rooftop for its maximum capacity (900 people).

On the typical floor plans, each of the four sectors will have an internal void, equivalent to a structural module, adding up to four large voids per floor. These voids, located in different positions on each floor, generate double height spaces that introduce variety in the experience of the working areas and allow the generation of unusual integrations between work teams on different floors.

Construction: industrialization, rationalization and flexibility

The building structure was designed in successive rings, predominantly perimetral in the working areas in order to free up the floor for multiple occupations. The adoption of prestressed concrete slabs allows reducing the total height of the building, enabling floor-to-floor heights of 3.50 meters on typical floors and 6 meters on the ground floor. It also equates fire protection economically, avoiding costly protection solutions – such as intumescent painting on metal structures. The use of flat slabs reduces work time and cost of the formwork, and totally releases the plenum of the ceiling for building facilities.

Light industrialized construction elements are considered in all partitions and in the building envelope, designed as a large light box. The translucency of the external envelope allows conciliating the reduction of thermal gain with the maximum of natural light, reinforced by the opening to the interior garden, also avoiding the creation of confined spaces in case of compartmentalization of work sectors.

Building infrastructure systems (MEP): sustainability, environmental efficiency and economy

MEP systems run from the core to the edges. Electricity and communications infrastructure occupy technical rooms next to the elevators, and are distributed in four sectors defined by the walkways connecting to the core, both by the ceiling and the raised floor. On the rooftop of the central core, it is considered the installation of solar panels for water heating and photovoltaic panels for energy generation in order to meet the sustainability requirements by increasing the environmental performance in terms of energy savings.

Plumbing systems have a concentrated distribution in shafts next to public use toilets, and secondary branches in the ceiling of workspaces, generating a water supply ring next to the exterior façade to make possible the eventual implementation of private toilets. The sewage, in this case, will be carried along the perimeter pillars to the ground.

The reservoirs of drinking water, rainwater for reuse and rainwater delay are located on the ground floor, next to the technical support areas for building maintenance. On the roof, the water tanks for fire water, drinking water and reuse rainwater for feeding the toilets will have a minimum dimension, reducing the overload on the structure.

The air conditioning systems consider the concentration of the condensing units in the core rooftop. The interconnection piping with the evaporator units will cross the central void – the canyon – in the ceiling of the four highest walkways, going down the entire length of the interior façade in shafts that will house sectorized and independently operated evaporator units, which will result in savings due to a simplified use and ease for maintenance. Insufflation can be carried out through ducts in the ceiling or through the floor, using the plenum of the raised floor – UFAD System (underfloor air distribution) -, which significantly reduces the cost with ducts, with automated diffusers coupled to the floor.

Mechanical ventilation of toilets and parking lots is significantly simplified with the centralized organization of the core, enabling the implementation of continuous shafts to the attic, where equipment are concentrated.

Fire Regulation

The classification of the building in the regulation of prevention and fire fighting of the Fire Brigade of São Paulo Military Police defines the following requirements for a building of medium-high height:

1 – Fire truck access, for which the internal street has the required width of 6 meters;

2 – Structural fire safety, to be provided by dimensioning the reinforced concrete structure, whose protection is the most economical when compared to other types of structures;

3 – Horizontal compartmentalization of the floor: the building classification – medium-high height – requires the compartmentalization of the floor type in sectors of a maximum of 800 m2 with wall and fire door with a fire resistance time of at least 90 minutes. However, note 2 of table 6D of Decree 63.911, of December 10, 2018 allows the replacement of compartmentalization by the use of sprinklers and fire detection;

4 – Vertical compartmentalization between floors, which is equated through open terraces with a width between 90cm and 110cm in the internal facades and in the glazed sections of the external facades; and, in the translucent parts of the external facades, a height of 1.20 m between floors, defined by the sum of sill, slab thickness and raised floor, and lintel that corresponds to the internal ceilings;

5 – Control of finishing materials, which will guide the adoption of low combustibility materials;

6 – Fire escapes – protected stairway with fire door, with escape distances of up to 75 meters when associated with the use of sprinklers and smoke detection system. The four protected fire escapes provide 12 passage units, allowing a total population of 900 people per floor, totalizing 5,400 people on standard floors, and up to 900 people on the rooftop;

7 – Fire brigade, emergency lighting, fire detection, fire alarm, emergency signaling, extinguishers and fire hydrants.