Maximizing Efficiency: 5 Innovative Strategies to Optimize Building Cores
Unlock the Full Potential of Your Building’s Core Space
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This week, we delve into optimizing the main functional components of a building core to maximize floorplate efficiency.
The building's core typically occupies about 15-20% of the total floorplate area, influenced by key elements such as:
Lifts.
Ventilation Risers.
Electrical and Hydraulic Risers.
Washrooms.
Escape Stairs.
Exploring alternative strategies can yield a more efficient footprint. However, the final choice depends on factors including:
Building size.
Market requirements.
Customer experience.
Maintenance regime.
Let’s dive in.
1. Air Ventilation: Centralized vs. Decentralized Systems
The common air ventilation strategy in buildings is centralized, distributing air to floors through risers located within the core. These risers can have a pretty significant impact on the overall footprint of the core.
In a centralized ventilation strategy, Air Handling Units are centrally placed, often on the roof in low to medium-rise buildings.
Depending on the type of project, floorplate and occupier market characteristics it may make sense to consider implementing a Decentralised Ventilation strategy. With this strategy, Air Handling Units are located on the floor or in the ceiling thus removing the need for big air risers travelling through the core.
2. Risers: Common Riser Room vs. Perimeter Risers
Building service risers typically account for about 4% of the core area, making efficient design crucial to minimize their impact on valuable floor space.
It is often thought that the most efficient way to arrange vertical risers is around the core's perimeter, as this is thought to minimise their area impact.
This is not always the case, for these reasons:
Their width gets reduced by horizontal beams connecting with the core.
They need access, becoming an obstacle for placing meeting rooms or private offices attached to the core.
Another solution worth investigating is to internalise all the vertical services into a common riser within the core, a method typically used in North American tall buildings.
The pros of doing this are as follows:
Access to the risers takes place from one single spot.
Space is more efficient in coordinating how the services fit together.
The core perimeter can connect with structural beams without impacting services.
3. Lift Systems: Double Deckers or Twins vs. Conventional
Lifts, crucial for transporting people, typically occupy about 9-10 square meters per shaft.. In tall buildings, the design of the lift system has a major impact on how the vertical core is configured. In other buildings the impact is not as significant, but it’s still key to understand how they work to offer the best service most efficiently.
Today Grade A Office buildings typically adopt a Destination Hall Control system to manage how the lift calls are distributed to customers around the building. This is more efficient than a conventional system as multiple calls to one floor are grouped, hence reducing traveling time to a determined floor.
Typically the taller and bigger in size the building is the more lifts are required and this can take up a big amount of space.
Double Decker or Twin Lift systems, place two lifts travelling one above the other in the same vertical shaft. Hence two lifts are able to take up 50% less area.
This system may not work for all types of buildings and the following aspects should be considered:
The entrance lobby needs to be on 2 levels. This can be hard to achieve or provide an awkward customer experience.
Often there is a wait in the lift while the upper / lower deck lift is being loaded with people.
4. Escape Stairs: Scissor vs. Traditional
Alongside lifts, escape stairs have the other most significant impact on the Core size. In addition, they need to be located so that they are compliant with the escape distances dictated by Local Building Regulations.
Depending on floorplate size and building height there might be a requirement to provide more than one escape stair for the building.
One way to reduce their impact is to consider combining 2 stairs into a single scissor stair.
It should be noted that this design can be challenging to get approved by the authorities in districts/countries where it is not typically used.
5. Washrooms: Executive Style (Superloos) vs. Conventional
Washroom configuration can be a topic of heated debates on Commercial Real Estate schemes. These need to be good-looking spaces, ergonomically functioning whilst also being compact.
Typically buildings provide separate male and female blocks with unisex disabled units.
Unisex Executive style washrooms can be considered in cases where floorplate space is constrained and there is a need to optimise the space available. However, this type of washroom design doesn’t work very well in every market because the use of the facilities is mixed.
In Summary
It’s worth taking time to evaluate alternative strategies for how to achieve the optimal core design for a development project. Clearly one needs to consider multiple factors to decide what is best, but I would suggest it’s always worth running a cost-benefit analysis on various systems to make an informed decision.
These are the key elements worthy of investigation:
Ventilation systems.
Risers.
Lifts.
Escape stairs.
Washrooms.
That’s all for today.
See you next week.
Is there anything else that you would like to add to the list?
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