Offices in park-like campuses, gardens on building rooftops

When you look at a city, it’s like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it.   —Hugh Newell Jacobsen

What is the city but the people?   —William Shakespeare

Landscaped gardens on the rooftops of office buildings, sprawling campus-like corporate communities with greenery and lakes, bike lanes and walkways to encourage people to use their cars less, designs to enhance natural ventilation, roads paved with natural materials like rammed earth plus cement instead of traditional pure concrete, elegant corporate structures with insulated exterior panels for better energy efficiency, recycle facilities for wastes and water sewage, nonstop electric power and WiFi-enabled facilities with back-ups and back-ups to the back-ups.

These are not sci-fi sets for a futuristic Hollywood action flick. These are some of the various innovative features of new benchmark, people-centered workplaces being developed now—in such diverse places as the UP-Ayala Land TechnoHub in Diliman, Quezon City, in the fast-rising Nuvali, spanning the cities of Sta. Rosa and   Calamba in Laguna and other regions—by leading property developer Ayala Land under its Ayala Land Businesscapes brand. This people-centered commitment to creating better work environments is best showcased in their technopods for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) IT/ITES related centers, corporate headquarters and masterplanned communities.

Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI) chairman Fernando Zobel de Ayala, himself a nature-loving marathon runner and biker, said: “Our company consistently maintains a timeless and long-term oriented approach in how we conduct our business… We have endeavored over many decades to build the trust and confidence of our customers, business partners and all our stakeholders… Our core values are integrity, reliability and commitment. The ALI way is clearly evident in our approach and anchors the product differentiation that we untiringly strive for.”

In an exclusive interview with the Philippine Star, ALI vice president for the Innovation and Design Group Joel Luna said: “The Zobels are very design-oriented especially Don Jaime Zobel de Ayala, as well as our chairman Fernando Zobel de Ayala. Most aspects of building designs, especially the aesthetics of our major buildings and developments, go through them. Our chairman is very interested in the look and feel of our projects due to our company’s commitment to providing unique experiences to our customers and our continuous thrust towards innovation and excellence

Aside from Luna who heads Ayala Land’s Innovation and Design Group with about 50 personnel — from architects to interior designers to landscape architects — this writer consulted architect Jojo Tolentino of Aidea design firm and Ayala Land’s senior architect Edwin Yabut for Ayala Land Businesscapes projects which are pioneering clean, cool, efficient, elegant and livable office buildings and park-like campus workplaces similar to those in Vancouver, San Francisco and the bay area of Silicon Valley, Tokyo midtown’s mixed-use areas and Ropponggi Hills, and other places.

Here are some completed and ongoing Ayala Businesscapes projects this writer looks forward to for trendsetting concepts and sustainable designs that will hopefully inspire the rest of the Philippines to rethink and redesign, if possible, our whole cities for a better future:

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UP-Ayala Land TechnoHub’s first phase has 20 hectares and 10 buildings. Architect Yabut said that an amazing 70 percent of the total land in this development is dedicated to open spaces, parks and greenery for people to relax and socialize. Even the parking spaces use permeable materials to allow rain water to permeate into the ground, for replenishing underground water supply and prevent flooding. Retention ponds that look like scenic lakes were created to collect rain for irrigation use in the greeneries. 

There’s another 12 hectares as option for future development. Planning for this project started in 2006 and work was completed in November last year for the inauguration of the first phase. This is the first project of this scale involving partnership of the academe and the private sector. The whole project reminds one of Silicon Valley near Stanford University or the Dubai Internet City. Tolentino and Yabut said that “unlike many office buildings of the past which were essentially office boxes geared for efficiency and production, the target of Ayala Land Businesscapes’ new design office buildings revolves around the user and combines the needs for business and the human side.”

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Bigger than Ayala Alabang and specifically designed with sustainability as a guiding principle is the 1,750-hectares Nuvali development in Laguna, which is a joint venture between Ayala Land and the Yulo family. The first phase of the BPO campus is 21 hectares, which includes a four-hectare lake and green open spaces. Lakeside Evozone will be WiFi-enabled. They are now already working on the second phase, which is another 25 hectares. About 56 percent of the land is earmarked for residential with about 200 hectares of dedicated open spaces apart from the parks inside each village, while 15 percent of Nuvali is masterplanned for unique business districts, schools, other institutional and commercial areas. Forty percent of the 1,750 hectares will be dedicated to open spaces, which also includes the Wildlife and Bird Sanctuary.

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The six-hectare Ayala Triangle bounded by Ayala Avenue, Paseo de Roxas and Makati Avenue now only has the old Makati Stock Exchange (MSE) building and the modern skyscraper of Tower One, with about 60 percent of this most valuable prime real estate still undeveloped. While waiting for the right timing to develop new towers by Ayala Land Businesscapes there, ALI is now improving the landscaped garden areas in about two hectares here to add excitement to Christmas in Makati and which is reportedly scheduled to be open to the public in November. The garden areas will have charming walkways for strolling, new lighting and sitting areas. Ayala Land preserved the old trees there, while adding royal palm trees, sculptures, temporary art installations, street lights and ornamental lights.

 Architect Joel Luna said: “I think what sets apart Ayala Land developments is the scale and the integration of uses in our projects. This means we don’t just develop stand-alone projects, we always have masterplanned office, residential, commercial, civic and other uses which are combined to create whole sustainable and ideal communities. Before our UP and NUVALI projects where BPO buildings are set in park-like environments, most BPO centers in the Philippines are stand-alone buildings. I think we at Ayala Land Businesscapes are the ones who are doing it best and on a big scale. “

Cities shouldn’t be unlivable and inhospitable concrete jungles or urban zoos. One of the challenges to 21st century urban planners whether in government or the private sector is how to create better and safer cities with more efficient workplaces without sacrificing leisure, aesthetic beauty, nature, heritage, social conveniences and long-term sustainability.

Despite the numerous age-old urban headaches of traffic congestion, over-population of old city centers and other problems, the future is exciting in the Philippines with the pioneering efforts of visionary developers like Ayala Land with their bold vision of ideal balanced workplace environments conducive to better human lifestyle, creativity and productivity.

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