Building puts PH in green world map

By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE ZUELLIG Building ‘raises the bar for green building standards in the Philippine prime office market.’

A 33-story Makati office tower that uses the same sustainable technology being used in the Freedom Tower in New York puts the Philippines in the green world map.

The Zuellig Building, sheathed in 28,000 square meters of floor-to-ceiling low-emissivity glass, joins the ranks of the world’s most state-of-the-art, environment-friendly buildings like the Bank of America Tower-New York City, Asia Square in Singapore, and Taipei 101.

All in all, there are only about a hundred LEED Platinum-certified high-rise office buildings worldwide. The Zuellig Building now joins this elite group.

Platinum certification

The US Green Building Council (USGBC) awarded the Zuellig Building the Platinum certification level under its LEED-CS (Leadership for Energy and Environmental Design-Core and Shell) program this month. Platinum, the highest level of LEED certification, is actually an upgrade for Zuellig Building, which was awarded at precertification the Gold level under LEED-CS in June 2009.

The Zuellig skyscraper that stands on a landscaped 8,285-square-meter site at the intersection of Makati Avenue and Paseo de Roxas is the first development in the Philippines in the LEED-CS program, and among the first in Asia, to earn the highest level in the LEED rating system for “green” architecture, sustainable construction methodologies and resource-efficient building operations. The property has a total leasable area of 55,000-sq-m prime-grade office space for multitenant use.

Building puts PH in green world map