Glorieta Insurgentes Tower

URBAN RESCUE: Urban acupuncture, an improvement to the damaged infrastructure of the city to promote and trigger its potential and development. The Glorieta Insurgentes Tower project was designed on the insertion as an urban acupuncture needle in one of the nerve points of the city, becoming a spearhead in the rescue of the area named Glorieta Insurgentes roundabout and public plaza, that is a public transportation hub where the first Metro & Bus Rapid Transit lines have been built around. In addition, in the roundabout converge some of the most emblematic neighborhoods of the city such as the Colonia Roma, the Colonia Condesa, the Colonia Juarez, and the Zona Rosa where several hundreds of thousands of city dwellers pass daily to connect to their various destinations. Our development helped to transform and improve this forgotten area that had been deteriorating with the passing of the years and the little attention that it had received, situation that has dramatically changed by the intervention and construction that Glorieta Insurgentes Tower brought to the zone. On the premises, laid an abandoned building since the 1985 earthquake full of graffiti, it is worth emphasizing one of which indicated “NO LIMIT”, which precisely describes our feeling as architects when approaching the project with the vision to foresee an urban rescue, through a project that revitalized the space. Fortunately, now the whole roundabout and plaza have been recently refurbished as well. As part of the improvement of the surroundings close to the Tower, we took on the task to take action into Nice square in the north-east, with the aim of promoting the use of the recreational public space by offering a quality environment to develop physical activities. The conception of the project included from the outset the principals of comfort and experience of the inhabitant, functionality, sustainability and energy efficiency with LEED Platinum Certification, transit oriented development with TOD Standard Silver Certification, seismic resilience, construction quality, characteristics of materials and ease of maintenance. The Tower stands as a landmark in Mexico City with an elegant and timeless design, which articulates Chapultepec Avenue with the Insurgentes Roundabout taking its semicircular shape & detonating it vertically to develop an office building of 26 levels above ground with a 120 m height. The Tower has direct access to the public transportation hub connecting the plaza through a new pedestrian path underground, encouraging the use of public & alternative transport in a city where movement is a major issue. The design of the different spaces has been carefully studied to enhance user experience. The Lobby greats the user immersed in light accented by a reflective aluminum ceiling that amplifies the space while making a poetic reflection in terms of the movement of the people thorough the building. The office slabs offer wide comfortable spaces that are surrounded by a double layer high efficiency low-e glass curtain wall allowing 360º panoramic city views enjoying lots of natural light. The Penthouse Office Space boasts an impressive double height. The floor plan has a 91% area efficiency due a compact service core without sacrificing comfort or functionality. The concrete structural slabs have undergone a polishing process which serves as final finish that looks great apart from being 50% more resistant and maintenance free reducing materials & weight. The tower has amenities for further comfort, an 800 people double height multi-purpose hall with retractile bleachers in the 8th floor as well as vegetated roof-gardens representing 20% of the plot area on top of the parking structure. The Tower is a Smart Building with 57.9% in energy savings and up to 100% water savings, during rainy season, due to a combination of design strategies & technologies which include: totally automated lighting & shading system with occupancy sensing, daylight harvesting, dimming & scheduling through the entire building that calculates the optimal settings taking into account indoor, outdoor & orientation conditions; efficient façade design with thermal gain blockage; individualized by floor air conditioning with a cost effective VRF System; roof solar panels producing approximately 50% of the needs of common space; total water treatment including harvested rainwater & wastewater; a Building Management System with a large video wall showcasing in real time all the information about the different systems in a very visual graphs & stats way, including pedestrian and vehicular access, fire detection, pumping systems, water treatment plants, cisterns, emergency plants, diesel levels, energy sub-metering, ventilation and extraction, a/c, lighting control, electrical and water consumption, maintenance programming & CCTV, making it a building with optimal operation with zero over cost. The structural solution was a special challenge taking in mind Mexico’s seismic conditions as well the plot constrains. So we developed in collaboration with the structural engineer a hybrid steel-concrete structure of a single frame bay with very wide clearings to offer versatile spaces supported by few mega-columns as well as an ultra-resistant foundation consisting of 54 m deep stilts and a 1 m thick structural slab. Being of very difficult access, we engineered a solution for concrete production on site with particular specifications & high resistance producing more than 36,000 cubic yards of concrete complemented with 6,700 tonnes of structural steel and 2,300 tonnes of rebar.