Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

Architects: Paragon Architects
Location: 50 Katherine Street, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa
Project Team: Leads: Anthony Orelowitz, Tershia Habbitts, Jose Ferreira, Claire D’Adorante
Interior Décor: Paragon Interface
Project Year: 2017
Photographer: Tristan Mcclaren , Edwin Seda
Website: www.paragon.co.za

Area: 130000.0 M2
Developer: Alchemy Properties/ Sasol Pension Fund
Structural Engineers: Sotiralis Consulting Engineers
Mechanical Engineers: Adaptive Resources

Green Consultants: PJC

Landscape Architects: Insite
Façade Engineers: Pure Consulting
Acoustic Consultant: Linspace
Contractor: Aveng Grinaker LTA

0

- 15 July 2017
- Datum Editorial
Commercial , Commercial Centres , Offices , Sustainability , Modern Africana , African Modernity , African Modernism , Modernism ,

From the Architects:
The new Sasol corporate office on Katherine Street brings together all 6000 staff members from its eleven satellite offices into one office space.

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

©Tristan Mclaren

The building leaps the boundary of the commercial edge of Sandton to hover as a floating glass box above an indigenous parkland.

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

©Edwin Seda

During May 2013, Paragon Architects was appointed as the Architects of a new Corporate Office on 50 Katherine Street in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2014 Paragon Interface won the invited competition for Interior Architecture and Space Planning.

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

©Edwin Seda

Sasol is a very large multinational Petrochemical Company with a wide variety of business units and activities in South Africa and abroad. This building was to replace their current occupation of 14 buildings around Johannesburg, and unify the Sasol corporate culture. Sasol had grown rapidly over the last two decades and had never occupied a single building with all of its Johannesburg based business units.

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

©Edwin Seda

As a result this was much more than just a structure. The building needed to reflect the mores of the company, respond to the site, and react to developments in architectural software and sustainable design. The Interior Architecture needed to accommodate over 3000 previously dispersed staff in a single building allowing for a consolidation of company values and work place design.

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

©Tristan Mclaren

Their logo which encapsulates their values, provided the departure point for the conceptual design of the building. Combined with Paragon’s pursuit of architectural design technology and developments in material development the building combined an approach to Sustainable Design.

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

©Tristan Mclaren

This approach proved to be very successful in presentations to the tenant, but it was ultimately the architecture that won the commission. A central core of circulation and services ties the building together and the various areas are linked by a series of bridges.

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

©Tristan Mclaren

A major challenge was the site which is on a curving edge of Katherine Street, and to ensure a large building of 130000m2 (lettable area: 68000m2) could be accommodated and well connected both vertically and horizontally. The building can accommodate up to 7500 people.

Sasol Place / Paragon Architects

©Tristan Mclaren

The building was modeled to respond appropriately to the widely used glazed envelope and the impact of natural light internally. The ground podium was widely planted with indigenous plants to encourage birdlife and butterflies and the well-being of staff was a major consideration, including facilities and access to public transport which is generally not well developed in South Africa.

©Edwin Seda

©Edwin Seda

The building has a 5 Star Green Star Design V1 rating, which will be confirmed As Built in 2018.

CLICK TO REVIEW LINKED STORY

30 Jellicoe Avenue/ Paragon Architects
Once again Paragon Architects presents us with an award winning debatably classically but highly environmental conscious building that respects the street and represents heavily architecture of our time. Paragon Architects was approached by Investec during 2011 to propose a design to accommoda...

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