IndochinaTower is a 14,000m2 International Standard Grade A office building being developed by Indochina Land and OPV. The building is located on a key downtown site in Ho Chi Minh City along one of the town’s major streets, Dien Bien Phu. Indochina Tower has been designed to accommodate the corporate headquarters of both groups as well as providing lettable speculative office space. The concept for the design is to create modern, efficient office space within the framework of a ‘GREEN’ building. The ‘GREEN’ features of the building include an environmentally-designed façade, a ground floor water garden, a sky garden on the top floor and a double height mezzanine floor at level 12. The project is planned to be LEED certified and incorporates a range of sustainable design technologies from shading, orientation and the buildings control system.

Orientation and massing

The constrained site offer limited opportunities for modulating the shape of the building to the climatic conditions. Positioning of the core on the NW side of the building allows for the heavy structural concrete core to act as an insulating barrier from the westerly sun.

Building shape

The shallow plan and 2.8m ceiling height allows natural light to reach across the floor plate of building from the glazed NE/SE facades. This minimises the necessity for artificial lighting systems and combined with lighting control systems will regulate the amount of artificial light required.

Solar Control

Solar heat and glare on the glazed elevations are controlled through a combination of louvres and low-e solar control glazing. There are two louvers per floor which vary in size. The sizes were developed through environmental shading models tested at different times of the day and the year. The lower louvre is wider to provide a greater degree of shading. For the SW elevation which receives the greatest amount of solar heat gain the amount of glazing is reduced and the solid shading wall with smaller openings wraps around the facade to provide a greater level of insulation and shading.

Internal Heat gain

The control of internal heat gains is important in minimizing air conditioning loads. This will primarily be done through the selection of efficient low energy lighting system which has a lower heat output as well as lower energy consumption.