Construction World March 2018

About Architects Of Justice The three partners in Architects Of Justice, Mike Rassmann, Kuba Granicki and Alessio Lacovig, formally established their practice in 2009 after working in various other architectural practices. “Our main reason for starting our own business, was that we wanted to do architecture in a way that all the projects we touched would be unique and exciting,” explains Rassmann. The three partners share the same goal of wanting to make a positive effect on the built environment by doing justice to their clients, their sites and architecture in all of their projects.

with by means of vertical louvres. “The building looks like it has a lot more glass than it actually does,” notes Rassmann, pointing to the fact all the windows were very strategically positioned in the design. Minimising maintenance to façade Two of the client’s major requests were to keep the design of the building as cost effective as possible and to minimise the amount of maintenance required on the façade. In order to achieve this the building is essentially a modest and efficient rectangular facebrick box, with a raw industrial interior, embellished on the exterior only by a simple external translucent polycarbonate screen, which not only moderates solar heat gain on the façades but also provides much needed shape and interest to the form of the building. Following the low maintenance brief, the only paint used on the exterior of the building is on the ground floor which is reachable without the need to set up scaffolding. Optimal solar conditions In order to take maximum advantage of South Africa’s optimal solar conditions, a photovoltaic (PV) solar plant, for electricity generation, was installed on the roof of the building. PV electricity generation is ideal for office buildings as they are predominantly in use during the day when electricity generation is taking place, thereby removing the necessity of installing a costly battery and inverter system within the building. To complement the green credentials provided by the solar façade controls and the PV installation, a large mono-pitch roof harvests rainwater which is stored in a 60 kilolitre tank above the ground floor boardroom. This water will be used for irrigation of landscaping and the washing of vehicles. The building is laid out over three levels; a ground floor housing the reception, a boardroom, a meeting pod, an open plan sales office, covered parking and a garage; a mezzanine floor housing a staff lounge with kitchen, executive offices and an indoor planted area (to incorporate greenery into the building interior); and a first floor housing the administration offices. “Although internally we went for an industrial finish, the windows and ceiling spaces were designed in such a way that the building could be retrofitted at a later stage into a more traditional office environment,” says Rassmann. Fruitful relationship AOJ worked closely with, and enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the client from early in the project. and after utilising the facility, Caldas Engineering couldn’t be happier; “After having occupied the building for a number of months now, we can say that these offices have had a positive impact on our business in terms of it being representative

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD MARCH 2018