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Rendering Credit: SOM
DRAWINGS
NEX is an office building located at Makati district of Manila in the Philippines. The site is bounded by Ayala Avenue on the North which is the major street of Makati surrounded by high-end luxury developments.
The first three levels of the tower and podium are primarily given over to the soaring lobby as well as office amenity, retail, and mechanical support programs. A terrace occupies the roof of the West podium, linked by a bridge over the lobby to the fourth level of the office tower. Additional terraces inhabit the top of the tower at the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh levels.
The facade expresses an eloquent, consistent narrative of what the building “is,” serving to make the tower’s formal programmatic moves legible and memorable. In designing the facade we extended the original formal analogy of “slicing,” in this case slicing a “rough” object to create “smooth” iconic facets.
The project’s material palette begins with the tower’s resemblance to a large crystal and pulls inspiration from the contrast between precious crystals and the rough rock they are typically found within. In the same way a luminous, gleaming, transparent crystal is offset by the opaque, rougher stone around it, the crystalline tower is offset by the stone podium around it. This theme of contrast between light and dark, smooth and rough, transparent and opaque continues throughout the building as lighter materials offset by darker subtly textured materials.
The Hydroponic Wall both serves as an aesthetically beautiful centrepiece to the lobby and an integral component of the mechanical system. By drawing air through the planted root media, the Hydroponic Wall aids in cleaning the lobby air of VOCs and other harmful contaminants. The recycled, cleaned air is then supplied back into the mechanical system, reducing the dependence on outside air and possibly reducing energy costs in the process.
