The Sasol Place building in Sandton, Johannesburg, designed by professional manage-ment services group Paragon Group’s subsidiary, Paragon Architects, won the office developments corporate and the overall winner awards from the South African Property Owners Association (Sapoa) in 2017.
Paragon Group director Anthony Orelowitz explains that Paragon Architects was chosen to build the office building, while the group’s interior architecture and space planning business Paragon Interface Architects was chosen to design the interior space after winning two competitive service appointment bids organised by Sasol.
The development and building of Sasol Place cost R1.2-billion and it took 36 months to complete, excluding the design phase. He says the 11-storey, 67 000-m2 office currently houses Sasol’s head office, incorporating over 17 offices across Gauteng into one location.
The building is housing 2 500 office workers, but it is capable of accommodating 7 000 workers.
Orelowitz points out that the building has reduced Sasol’s total environmental footprint by 40%, compared with its previous buildings.
Orelowitz says all the lifts throughout the building have been centralised, with the lavatories also located in the middle. This enables anyone in the building to never be further away than 20 m to 30 m from the central circulation point of the building.
“The building plates have been designed to allow as much flexibility for the tenants that would occupy it to be incredibly efficient; the floor plate centralises all the services into a single point, with individual pockets for tenants available as small as 300 m2,” he explains, pointing out that, by using the floor space in this manner, the overall efficiency of the building floor space is about 91%.
By having biomes, coffee shops, a wellness centre, a convenience store, a fitness centre and a dedicated gallery with a sculpture garden, Sasol Place has received the 5-Star Green Star design rating.
The Sapoa Innovative Excellence in Property Development Awards recognise and applaud property professionals who undertake massive projects that result in globally competitive property developments.
In addition to the award for Sasol Place, the group also won an award for the GE Africa Innovation Centre in Houghton, Johannesburg.
