Marloes Reinink, director, say:

Solid Green has been an integral part of South Africa’s green building journey for the past decade. We are immensely proud of every certification we have been involved with – from the smallest victories to the big ‘Firsts’; and we are committed to contributing towards the important advances that the sector is taking to align itself with best practice worldwide.

Developed by Attacq, The Ingress Waterfall’s 20,000sqm of premium-grade commercial space comprises five office buildings ideally located at the entrance to Waterfall City, with visible street access. The buildings, which are located close to a variety of amenities in a pedestrian-friendly, bikeable precinct, are suitable for single occupiers with their own identity or can be divided into multi-tenanted suites.

“Urban resilience and people’s health and wellbeing have been under the spotlight this year,” observes Miron Naidoo, Property Development Manager at the Attacq Group.

With this 4-Star Green Star SA Office Design rating for Phase 1, The Ingress Waterfall has successfully been recognised as Best Practice by implementing standards that speak to these critical considerations, as well as the need to optimise business efficiencies for our clients.

Madi van Wyk, Director at ARC Architects, explains that, in order to create a park within a precinct, the five buildings were placed along the perimeter of the site ensuring a strong street presence while allowing for a larger central courtyard. “The buildings were designed to allow maximum light into the central square and to create a comfortable human scale that does not feel overshadowed by tall building masses,” she says.

A lot of planting was added to further enhance the human scale of the courtyard, with stepped decks to accommodate different seating environments served by the central cafè comprising two repurposed containers.

Van Wyk adds that a façade design was developed for each type of environment faced, which ultimately ties all buildings together. For the North and East facing façades, glazing with spandrels and horizontal louvres was used to address the high sun exposure and glare. Feature elements called for fully glazed facades where dark tinted, double-glazed view panels were used. The Southern facades have similar glazing with spandrels, but with vertical louvres to mitigate the low Western sun that reaches these facades especially during winter months. The Western facades are more solid with punch-out windows or deep-set balconies.

Energy modelling was carried out in the design stages of the buildings and, compared to a notional building model, Greenhouse Gas Emissions have been reduced by 48%. Sub-metering and an effective mechanism for monitoring energy were provided to facilitate ongoing management of energy consumption.

All individual spaces or enclosed spaces are a maximum of 100sqm in size and are individually switched with motion sensors to offer greater flexibility and make it easy to light only occupied areas. The lighting power density for artificial light was also limited to a maximum of 1.50W/sqm per 100 lux to ensure minimal energy consumption. To ensure a high Indoor Environmental Quality, at least 95% of interior finishes specified are low VOC products.

Water meters and an automated monitoring mechanism were put in place to effectively monitor and manage water consumption. Water efficient sanitary fittings were specified and potable water consumption for landscape irrigation was reduced through the use of waterwise landscaping and efficient irrigation systems. This has also resulted in the building’s discharge to sewer being reduced by 50% against an average practice benchmark.

To create a unified brand identity for the precinct, the same material ingredients will be used in different configurations to give each of the five buildings a unique identity, with the lush use of greenery in numerous planters running between and around buildings to ultimately finish off the palette. The absolute quantity of Portland Cement was reduced by 30% across all concrete uses during construction, and reused or post-consumer recycled content steel was utilized in order to reduce the project’s embodied energy and minimise resource depletion.

The steps taken by the developer and professional team to implement sustainable construction and operations at The Ingress Waterfall take into consideration the important balance between environmental concerns, economic feasibility and occupant health and wellbeing.

Project Team

OWNER: Attacq Waterfall Investment Company
ACCREDITED PROFESSIONAL: Solid Green Consulting
ARCHITECT: ARC Architects Pretoria
ELECTRICAL ENGINEER: Claassen Auret Electrical & Electronic Consulting Engineers
FIRE ENGINEER: WSP
LIFE SPECIALIST: Schindler
MECHANICAL ENGINEER: Q Mech Consulting Engineers
QUANTITY SURVEYORS: RLB Pentad Quality Engineer
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS: EDS Africa Consulting Pty Ltd
SUSTAINABLE BUILDING CONSULTANT: Solid Green Consulting
WET SERVICES: Green Planet Engineer Services
MAIN CONTRACTOR: Archstone Construction
PROJECT MANAGER: Attacq Waterfall Investment Company
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANT: Ecology International Pty Ltd
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Land Arch
BMS SYSTEMS PROFESSIONAL: Classen Auret Electrical & Electronic Consulting Engineers