Buildings: Siemens HQ, Masdar City

With no extra budget for low energy targets, Sheppard Robson avoided importing expensive technologies for Siemens’ Masdar HQ. Future investment in the workforce is surely the only real sustainability. 

Words: Jan Carlos Kucharek
Photographs: Hufton + Crow

A distant sight from the Dubai-bound highway, obfuscated in a heat haze on the plane between Khalifa City suburbia and the periphery of Abu Dhabi airport, Masdar City appears at first indistinct on the horizon. Yet on approaching it is revealed for what it is: raised above the flat datum of the desert and standing in relief against its dusty yellow, it configures itself as an isolated citadel of rich terracotta – and, since Sheppard Robson’s new regional HQ for German firm Siemens recently completed – of pale, faceted steel.

This illusory first impression, contrasting with the true solidity of this desert development, could be read metaphorically. The creation of Masdar City has to some extent been a game of smoke and mirrors: the concept of a pioneering sustainable city in an aggressive, arid context would seem to an impossible contradiction. Yet since 2007, when Foster + Partners was brought in to devise the masterplan for a 600ha trophy project on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi and to design its sustainability showpiece, the Masdar Research Institute, it has refused, despite a crippling global economic downturn, to surrender itself up to the sands. This latest office building, knitted into the northern edge of the Institute complex, not only generates critical mass for Masdar’s sustainability agendas; it’s an exemplar of economic viability – which is crucial if the city is to reach its projected 2030 maturity.

To call the Foster + Partners project the Arabian stallion to Sheppard Robson’s camel would be trite, but there’s an element of truth to it. Conceived in an economic boom, the Masdar Institute was intended to be the poster boy of the scheme. With performance levels 51% better than the 2004 ASHRAE benchmark, and up to 68% better than comparable Abu Dhabi building stock, it comfortably met sustainability criteria – but at a cost. Foster + Partners’ commitment to precision-engineered quality meant its signature curved terracotta dormitory and ETFE laboratory facade panels were pre-fabricated and brought to site, with high spec installed mechanical plant imported from the US. Add in the fact that the whole facility was up on a 10m high concrete podium, to be rolled out across the site, under which jetson-like driverless cars of the city’s eco-friendly personal rapid transport system (PRT) were intended to shuttle residents and workers from centre to city edge where their cars were parked, the whole thing smacked of blank cheque economics.

In today’s tougher financial climate, the Siemens regional HQ is something of a paradigm shift for Masdar City, involving a reappraisal of all the givens. First, with Google about to launch a driverless car, leaps in hydrogen fuel cell technology and a new urban metro link proposed, the ‘closed system’ of the PRT has been replaced by an ‘open’ one, allowing the city to adopt multiple transit technologies concurrently and obviating the need to extend the podium. Second, to reduce embodied carbon, procurement models should encourage local construction techniques and sourcing; and thirdly, government owner/developer Mubadala is expected to step back from its stringent carbon reduction demands to create conditions ripe for ‘musataha’ third party investment. This last was a self-realisation for Masdar – while born of zero carbon , it has to relax this demand to survive....Continue Reading

> via RIBAJ