The FINANCIAL — Creating highly insulated buildings to reduce heat loss in winter and thermal radiation in summer are steps that construction businesses are currently taking to be more environmentally friendly.
“Using solar power generating photovoltaic glazing systems to create energy for the building is something we are looking into for Tbilisi Business Centre. We have to use the latest advances in glass technology that allow a high percentage of the sun’s energy to reflect in the summer months. Also, we plan to create terrace gardens for each level to absorb CO2 and produce oxygen,” Robin Monotti Graziadei, architect and managing partner of Robin Monotti Architects, told The FINANCIAL.
According to Monotti, green building can be promoted by creating a prize for green buildings that rewards the best new projects with green credentials.
London-based Robin Monotti will bring the 16-storey circular tower of 16,000 m2 of space as a new business centre to Tbilisi. The business centre will include offices, conference halls, trading floors, restaurants, outdoor garden terraces on each level, and parking. The design of the new tower is a delicately balanced stack of glass-enclosed disks that seem to spiral upward, and the structure will be located next to an angular, boxy structure designed by the architects Giorgi Chakhava and Zurab Jalaghania and built in 1975. This angular structure now serves as the headquarters of Bank of Georgia.
As there is very little awareness and limited practice of green building among the business community in Georgia, Monotti said that “it needs to be taught at university so new students in architecture will consider it an important aspect of their education as architects or engineers”.
“The artificial and natural worlds are starting to be reunited again in architecture, with the creation of gardens at high levels and buildings that integrate nature,” Monotti said in answer to the question on where architecture is today and where it is going.
The Tbilisi Business Centre project is already among the list of projects that Monotti is proudest of. The Watering Holes fountain for the Royal Parks of London, and Yacht House Foros, Ukraine, are also in the list.
The terms for completing the business centre, cost of the project and other details of negotiation, Monotti kept confidential.
“The initial decision was to find a suitable government-owned site along the river but outside of the historic centre. The new Tbilisi Business Centre was designed for its context, and was only developed after a visit to the site and a careful consideration of how to create a new building next to Bank of Georgia, formerly the Ministry of Highways, a listed national monument of Georgia.
“As the Bank of Georgia is a massive concrete building, we wanted to create something light and glassy,” said Monotti.
He explained that as Bank of Georgia is boxy and full of 90 degree angles, they wanted to create something rounded and without any angles. “As Bank of Georgia uses the “Space-City” method which allows space to flow through the building, we wanted to create a building that is spatially compact. As the BOG building is created out of horizontal cantilevering beam floors, we wanted to create a vertical building.”
“In order to not be overshadowed by such a powerful neighbour, and in turn not to overshadow it, we wanted Tbilisi Business Centre to match the height of BOG and to be built at an appropriate distance from it, he added.
“If Bank of Georgia’s shape can be considered very ‘male’ because of the sharp angles, Tbilisi Business Centre is ‘female’ because of its rounded shape,” Monotti said.
In his words, the initial concept models, perhaps appropriately for a business centre, were made with coins on a table. This allowed many different combinations to be tested very quickly.
Monotti holds Georgian architecture in high esteem. “You can never spend enough time in Georgia as there is so much to see and learn from. We rate Georgian architecture very highly and look forward to cooperating with a Georgian architecture office on this project.”
Glass buildings have become very popular worldwide and also in Georgia. Monotti explained it as an architecturally symbolic message that administration, law enforcement, business and management can be transparent processes to the wider public.
“Chakava’s Ministry of Highways (the current headquarters of Bank of Georgia in Tbilisi) and Casa Malaparte in Capri, Italy, are my favourite buildings,” Monotti told The FINANCIAL.
Discussion about this post