Bee’ah Headquarters – Giving back to Society!

Info & Images: Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects

Renders by MIR © Zaha Hadid Architects

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In its efforts to give back to society a wee bit of what we take from it, Bee’ah, the Middle East’s leading fully-integrated environmental and waste management company, uses ace architect, Zaha Hadid’s contextual design for its new Headquarters building in Sharjah, UAE…

Following the 2013 international competition, the new Headquarters building is part of Bee’ah’s on-going investment to transform attitudes and behaviours in individuals, communities, businesses and cities by providing the infrastructure, tools and support to achieve their environmental goals. Working towards its Zero-Waste to landfill, cleaner air and water, renewable energy and sustainable future targets, Bee’ah is developing coherent and sustainable environmental solutions to meet the challenges of the community it serves.

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Designed in response to its natural environment to provide comfort for visitors and staff alongside minimising energy and resource consumption, the formal composition of the ZHA design is informed by its desert context as a series of intersecting dunes orientated to optimize the prevailing Shamal winds, and designed to provide its interiors with high quality daylight and views, whilst limiting the quantity of glazing exposed to the harsh sun.

The 7,000 sq. m. structure is located on a 90,000 sq. m. site that has enabled the development of the design as an array of dunes within its desert landscape leading to the two central dunes of the Headquarters building.

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The two said dunes house the public and management section (entrance lobby, auditorium, visitors’ education centre and gallery, and management offices) and the administrative section (departmental offices and staff café) and intersect and connect via a central courtyard that forms an ‘oasis’ inside the building - enhancing the natural ventilation and maximising indirect sunlight to the public and administrative spaces within.

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The building systems have been developed in conjunction with Atelier Ten to minimise both the energy required for cooling and the need for potable water consumption. In milder months, the façade is operable to allow natural ventilation - minimising the need to provide cooling to the building. When conditioning is required, it will be optimised for energy conservation via the use of ventilation energy recovery - allowing fresh air into the spaces with reduced energy impact, and the waste heat that would normally be rejected from the chillers into the atmosphere is to be harvested to provide free pre-heating of the domestic hot water supplies.

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The exterior finishes of the building have been selected to reflect the sun’s rays and help to further reduce energy consumption by providing a local heat profile that is akin to the natural desert environment (rather than the high heat profiles associated with conventional roofing systems).

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These active and passive energy approaches are calculated to reduce energy consumption by 30%. All power required for the building will be generated via low and zero carbon sources, principally from the adjacent Bee’ah Waste Management Centre’s conversion of municipal waste (that would otherwise decay in landfill) into energy, together with large arrays of photovoltaic cells incorporated within the site’s landscaping.

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The building’s structure has been developed in conjunction with Buro Happold to minimise material consumption through architectural and structural integration. Individual elements of the building’s structure and skin are of standard orthogonal dimensions, enabling significant portions to be constructed from materials recovered from the local construction and demolition waste streams managed by Bee’ah, minimising demand for new materials.

The Bee’ah Headquarters building embodies these principles by providing the company with an administrative centre of sustainable construction of LEED Platinum Certification, with ultra-low carbon and minimal water consumption in operation and minimised material consumption in construction. The new building and site will also be used as a learning resource to demonstrate practical environmental awareness to the wider community.