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Heating, cooling, ventilation and air conditioning
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24
Mechanical Technology — February 2014
A
tterbury’s Newtown Junc-
tion is being constructed on
2,82 ha of land in the heart of
Newtown between the Market
Theatre and Carr Street, Johannesburg.
“The site used to be the potato market
and one of the conditions to build is to
incorporate some of the historic ele-
ments: the interesting steel structures;
the corrugated red roofing; and the
old Victorian toilet,” says Berry. “We
couldn’t actually use the existing roof
sheeting, but we have recreated the look
and feel of it, and the toilet has been
fully preserved which was a construc-
tion headache,” he adds.
The development involves three
components. The main site consists of
a 30 000 m
2
Nedbank office building,
which will sit on top of two floors of
retail mall, accessible from the up-
per ground shopping level. The third
component, called the Majestic, is a
separate office building with a further
8 000 m
2
, also for Nedbank.
Part of the rejuvenation of inner city
Johannesburg, Newtown Junction is
being mooted as a shopping, leisure
and fashion experience and has at-
tracted 98 tenants so far, including Pick
n Pay, Shoprite, Mr Price, Truworths,
Foschini, Ster Kinekor and the Edgars
Group. A gym and nine restaurants sit
on the upper mall level and four levels
of basement parking with 2 400 bays
are also being constructed, all linked
via pedestrian walkways and bridges
to the area’s heritage and attractions:
Atterbury is currently in the construction phase of its Newton
Junction Development in downtown Johannesburg, which,
as well as housing Nedbank’s consolidated Johannesburg
offices, will comprise 36 000 m² of shopping centre, gym
and four levels of basement parking with approximately
2 400 bays. Atterbury Property Development is also
planning to build a hotel on the site in the near future.
MechTech
talks to WSP’s Simon Berry, future cities thought
leader for energy and green buildings; and Lindsay Lund,
the company’s technical director, mechanical, about the
HVAC system for Nedbank’s green office space and for the
mall below.
WSP’s Lindsay Lund, the company’s technical director, mechani-
cal and Simon Berry, future cities thought leader for energy and
green buildings.
An east aerial view of Atterbury Newton Junction Development in downtown Johannesburg, which, as
well as housing Nedbank’s consolidated Johannesburg offices, will comprise 36 000 m² of shopping
centre.
Newtown Junction: from potato shed to
Newtown precinct; Museum Africa;
Mary Fitzgerald Square; and the Nelson
Mandela bridge.
Continuing Atterbury’s development
association with South Africa’s leading
green companies, Nedbank’s Newtown
Junction offices aim to achieve a
4-star Green Star rating from the
Green Building Council of South Africa
(GBCSA). This aligns with both compa-
nies’ business philosophies for greener
and more sustainable developments.
The HVAC systems
Starting with the basement parking,
Lund says that the primary concern
is to ventilate the space to prevent
concentrations of carbon monoxide ac-
cumulating. “Fundamentally, the base-
ment ventilation system has to comply
with the National Building Regulation,
SANS 10400 Part O: Lighting and
ventilation,” he says.
“We decided to use fan systems that
will have a dual function. Incoming
air is drawn in through the street ac-
cess ramps,” he tells
MechTech
. From
basement level -4 to just above street
level, three large ventilation shafts
(4,5×4,5 m), each with one large fan,
and a fourth shaft (2,3×8,0 m), with
three smaller fans are being built into the
building. These extract air out of the car
park via 4,0×4,0 m louvered ducting.
“These fans ventilate the basement park-
ing 24/7, assisted by induction jet fans
on each level to assist circulation, but,
under fire conditions, the fans will actu-
ally ramp up, via VSDs, to 54 000
ℓ
/s,
in order to contain any smoke spread in
the basement space,” Lund explains.
