Standard Bank building five-star rated

Situated on the corner of Oxford and Bolton Roads in Rosebank, this new building comprises of 70,000m² of office space and 3 900 parking bays spread across a nine story building, an eleven story building and five super-basement levels. A central multi-volume atrium extends the public piazza into the building complex.

It is anticipated that up to 5,000 people will be working in the new building complex by the end of 2013. In addition to the abundance of excellent office and working space, there are also rest and meeting rooms, as well as multiple pause areas. There are also more than 400 indigenous trees in the external garden that features a linear water feature with granite rocks recycled from a quarry.

Challenging project

Lining up with Standard Bank's philosophy, the architects concentrated on improving contact between the inside and the outside, lowering the boundary between the office space and the outside elements, with everything designed around the central atrium.

According to Moncardo Chitray, owner of Durban-based Montreal Projects, the main painting contractor, the Standard Bank Rosebank project required serious teamwork, dedication and commitment between Durban and Johannesburg to get the job done. At its peak, the 18-month project had 55 painters on site.

"The Green Building Council of South Africa's green-rating requirements and Standard Bank's stringent health and safety requirements made the project quite challenging, but everything went well and we were very pleased with the end result," said Chitray. "This really was a great team effort between ourselves and our team in Durban, our team in Johannesburg, the paint distributor in Johannesburg and Dulux itself."

With green rating being one of Standard Bank's fundamental requirements for the development - which has a Five-Star Green Rating from the Green Building Council of South Africa - green standards were introduced to the project from the beginning of the painting and decorating process, right through to the disposal of containers used.

Clean-ups with EnviroWash

According to Quintis van der Merwe of the Dulux Specialist Paint Centre in Wynberg who supplied the paint, this was one of the proudest projects they have ever worked on. Throughout the preparation and painting process there was a total focus on eco-friendly practises and behaviour. A number of Dulux Trade's special EnviroWash systems were utilised on the site.

Significantly, Dulux Trade was one of the silver founding members of the Green Building Council of South Africa, a factor that has seen Dulux products specified for many of South Africa's top green star rated buildings in recent years. "The painting element of this major project ran extremely smoothly with the Ecosure range providing excellent colour consistency," said Van der Merwe.

Stressing the lengths that were gone to in order to ensure maximum eco-friendliness, he said that in addition to all clean-ups being done on site via the EnviroWash system, all paint containers were taken away and recycled by a waste disposal company which issued a certificate of compliance to guarantee that the proper recycling processes had indeed been followed.