To kick off the semester, on 17 September, the Architecture Department of Universitas Ciputra Surabaya and its Student Union hosted an event and Studium Generale on the theme of “Architecture, Property, and Sustainable Living”. This is topic is more relevant than ever, as real estate players recognize that the built environment plays a major role in promoting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, particularly health and wellbeing, the future of sustainable cities and communities, and climate action.
This event is a collaboration between the Architecture Department of Universitas Ciputra Surabaya, FIABCI, The International Real Estate Federation Indonesia, and Asrinesia.
Gregory Kovacs, Design Director at Benoy, gave a keynote presentation focussed on “New Horizons for Sustainable Architecture and Property: Innovative and Inspiring Buildings”, detailing Benoy’s approach to sustainable design thinking and our core sustainability principles, demonstrated by key case studies around the region.
Gregory presented 3 key projects that showcased ‘Hyper-sustainability’, a combination of different aspects of sustainability that embraces the combined elements of: social, cultural, economic, commercial, environmental, mental and physical.
Gregory was presented a Certificate of Appreciation from Universitas Ciputra as gratitude for the knowledge sharing session.
There was huge interest in Gregory’s approach and explanation of innovative and sustainable design, which generated a number of questions and engaged discussion with the audience and participating students following the lecture.
Three Benoy projects demonstrating ‘Hyper-sustainability’:
An Innovative Headquarters Office Tower
Surrounded by other soaring office buildings, Benoy’s vision was to create an unmistakable icon that truly reflects the company’s culture and is rooted in its urban environment — a dynamic tower that seamlessly blends work, social activity, and creativity into a cohesive user experience.
The design aimed to connect the new office tower to its local community. In creating a building that truly stands for the company and connects with its environment, we designed an interactive façade that broadcasts to the city. Instead of a typical podium tower typology, we created a ’vertical podium’ that brings the public and office people together, creating a strong connection throughout the structure and blurring the boundaries between private and public realms. The public are invited to enjoy the facilities in the tower, whilst the company’s staff such as programmers and content creators can draw inspiration through engagement with the public.
Melding public programmes such as retail, F&B, entertainment and recreation spaces, and exhibition and meeting facilities with productivity elements such as creative spaces, coworking areas and flexible office spaces, this tower of the future aims to bring people together through architecture. We imagine a tower that is inclusive, that is designed to bring people together and creates communities both online and offline.
Holland Village, Singapore
The design brief for this competition scheme called for the revival of an existing retail precinct for Singapore’s Holland Village. The once popular shopping and dining destination, visited solely for its eateries and shopping, was in need of a revival; turning it back into the people-centric place it was once known to be.
Benoy’s design for Holland Village reflects a low-rise urban village with integrated, usable public realm. The design has mediated old and new seamlessly, whilst adding unique elements to curate a renewed identity for the district. The ground plane retains the commerciality of the development with a ‘shop front’ typology that serves retail and F&B offerings, intertwined with landscaped streets and public squares. An extensive green roofscape has been introduced to provide a flexible offering for its users, helping to reinforce Holland Village as a people-centric destination.
Benoy’s vision for Holland Village provides a human-scale, urban district that aims to deliver vibrant pockets of reformed space for the whole community to enjoy.
Yongchuan Li, China
Is it possible to create a truly sustainable shopping mall? How do we give this project a new soul? How do we make the old layouts commercially viable? –all without changing the structure of the building? And how do we create a development that addresses the needs of its neighborhood?
These are the questions that we asked ourselves over and over and has been driving the development of our YongChuan Li project.
It is more than just another mixed-use scheme in a Chinese city. The uniqueness of the project is that the structure was built many years ago and been sitting unfinished in heart of the Yongchuan District in Chongqing, as the built structure was no longer commercially viable.
We converted the oversized outdoor plaza into a series of meandering retails streets which became a pedestrian town centre and something that the whole area has been lacking. This precinct also created a strong link between the two previously disjointed volumes of the indoor retail space.
The architecture of the retail street is a contemporary reinterpretation of the local “Ba Yu” architecture. Deeply embedded in the local culture, fostering a strong sense of ownership within the local community.
The new design of the main façade references traditional Sichuan shadow play theatres, given a contemporary reinterpretation. Using animated LED screens and a translucent building envelope to create a dynamic “light and shadow” spectacle along the main road of Yongchuan.
The development brings a revitalized town centre to the area with a unique mix of art, culture, entertainment, tourism, 2 hotels, and indoor outlet retail mall and an F&B outdoor retail street. The project strategically integrates social, environmental, and commercial sustainability.
View Gregory’s session here (2:36:13 — 2):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqVkcPUaIos
