Vodafone Innovation Centre, Midrand. GLH Architects

Ah, a sandwich, a beigel sandwich, an ‘everything’ beigel splashed with hundreds and thousands of seeds, gently toasted on either side.buttered. Cream cheese, double thick, cresting as it’s heavily smeared atop the warm New Yorker holy plateau, melting as it hits the warmth of the toasty edge. The Nova lox, salmon, gloriously pink, plucked fresh from the claws of a giant grizzly in the cold tundra of Canada. As the smoked salmon is bedded upon the cream cheese, heavily set, fresh cut firm tomatoes, bursting with seed are laid to rest, overlapping the pinky gray. Capers, hugged and squeezed are drizzled over the tomatoes. Ah a crack o’ pepper, a shake o’ salt, and then crowned with the top side of the beigel. aaaah....sorry, this is an architecture blog. I digress.

the Vodacom Innovation Hub that sits in Midrand , sits layered, founded on a series of snaking Gabion walls, walls that ‘breathe’ allowing cool breaths of wind to pass beneath the building to circulate through its bowels. Giant chillers sip sippity sip the cool breeze, plummeting its temperatures, and pulsing the coolness through the breathing gills set with-in the pre-cast slabbed floor.

The double Skin facade performs allowing the edifice to appear aquarium-like.  Harnessing the science of radiation, transmittance, and conduction, the 2 panes of glass sandwich an 800mm air filler active in buffering the inside from the heat of outside. The void open to the elements breathes mediating the infiltrating outside temperatures.  Automated blinds rise and fall as the sun dots and dances its path across the sky protecting occupiers from harsh radiation.
The facade sits upon a concrete floor, pre-cast and pre-piped for winding chilling pipes to gush cold coolth through the ground as summer temperatures soar. 
The eucalyptus trunks lean and beautifully paired support the laminated beams, soft roof, and some serious electricity generating solar panels. The abundance of energy supplies even the neighbours. What a giver. Centre of the square donut sits a water purification plant souping up rain water and grey water too. It’s filled with indigenous reeds which are soaking and cleaning making reuse practical.

Radiant coolers divide spaces, cool the rising heat, satiate the thirst of plants below and act as water cooler talking points.

Outside chipped once-used Spanish roof tiles lay scattered upon the earth keeping moisture in the soil, protecting it from the pulverising drying abilities of the sunny orb. Indigenous planting huddles, surrounds the oblong building sipping not too much and not too little, but just right.

This is Johannesburg’s 6-star Green Star test tube. It’s an illustration of sustainable design, there to be seen, there to be understood.