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Whatever your take on modern urban architecture, you can’t help but be
impressed with HSBC’s new headquarters in Mexico City. Four years in
the making, its 36 floors of glistening steel and glass measure nearly
140 metres from pavement to roof.
But as dramatically imposing as the Torre HSBC might be, it’s not the magnitude of this 40,000 square-metre office that is turning heads. Rather, attention is focusing on its innovative design. Opened in April 2006, HSBC’s Mexican headquarters is being hailed as the most environmentally-friendly office in Latin America.
Among the building’s many eco-innovations are a rainwater collection system, a water treatment plant and a system of efficient irrigation for the Torre’s green areas. The roof is home to a veritable forest of endemic plants that require little water and help clear the city’s smog-prone atmosphere. The tower is also equipped with a device that cuts energy consumption by 40 per cent.
As a working environment, it’s a far cry from most dingy, neon-lit office spaces. Nine out of ten of the building’s 2520 workstations boast a view outside and 75 per cent are illuminated by natural light. For those that are not, the building’s architects have installed an ‘intelligent illumination system’ that automatically regulates lighting levels, thereby saving on the consumption of electricity.
In time, HSBC wants all its flagship buildings to be as eco-efficient as its Mexican headquarters. As one of the world’s largest banks, that is no small objective. It owns or occupies offices and branches in 82 countries worldwide. Under its Environmental Efficiency Programme, it intends to invest tens of millions of pounds over the next five years to improve the environmental footprint of its buildings. The funding will be used to finance a range of efficiency measures, including renewable technologies such as micro wind turbines and solar energy.
Another key element of the programme focuses on raising awareness among HSBC employees. Promoting sustainable travel and renewable technology will, it is hoped, become second nature to the company’s executives in the near future.
Finally, the programme is set to build on HBSC’s existing efforts in waste management. It intends to establish a comprehensive, company-wide system based around what Jon Williams, head of group sustainable development, calls the ‘three Rs’: reduction, re-use and recycling.
Cutting across the programme’s various activities are two guiding priorities. Firstly, projects must be easy to adopt. And secondly, they should – wherever possible – make commercial sense. ‘If you make eco-efficiency easy, people will be more inclined to do it,’ explains Williams. ‘What’s more, even if there’s no immediate pay-back, we want the programme to inform us about what technologies can be used around the world.’
As a first step, HSBC will be focusing on improving the environmental performance of 50 of its major buildings. It will use these both to benchmark the company’s total property portfolio as well as to provide a source for emerging best practice. Every year the programme will be subject to a full review, during which the success of the emerging technology and the bank’s business needs will be taken into account.
HSBC is no newcomer to sustainable construction, as its Mexican headquarters indicates. The other jewel in its crown is the bank’s global head office in Canary Wharf, central London. Designed by the world-renowned architect, Lord Norman Foster, the 45-storey building was fitted with the latest environmental efficiencies in mind. It boasts escalators that go into ‘standby’ mode when not in use as well as an intelligent lighting system – the single largest installation of its kind in Europe – which allows out of hours lighting to be controlled via an employee’s telephone. It even has a bottling plant in the basement, which helps keep the purchase of glass bottles to a minimum while diverting 150,000 tonnes of glass from landfill each year.
But where the Canary Wharf example really acts as a model for the rest of the company is its success in motivating employees to change their behavioural patterns. Personal rubbish provides a perfect case in point. In the Canary Wharf offices alone, the amount of waste going to landfill was reduced from 78 per cent to zero following the implementation of a dual bin recycling system for employee use in 2006, and the bank is looking to roll out similar schemes to all of its major UK offices.
The overall impact of these efforts in its London headquarters recently earned the building an Energy Efficiency Accreditation from the National Energy Federation. The accreditation comes after the Building Research Establishment rated the building operations and management as ‘excellent’ in its annual environmental assessment. It was the first office space in the Canary Wharf development to achieve such an accolade.
The challenge of spreading these best practices to the rest of HSBC’s offices remains considerable. First and foremost is the problem of scale. HSBC employs 312,000 people across the world. Communicating to people in different countries and different cultures is no easy task, admits Williams. To aid communication, HSBC has a number of dedicated corporate responsibility teams around the group as well as 26 sustainability risk managers in all the major regions where it operates.
Williams remains realistic about the extent to which sustainable buildings can reduce the bank’s overall footprint. Even if all its buildings resemble its flagship offices in London or Mexico, its activities will still result in carbon emissions, albeit in reduced volume.
In addition to HSBC’s in-house energy reduction and recycling initiatives, therefore, it is also investing in external carbon reduction programmes. In 2004 it began buying green electricity and carbon credits to off-set the carbon emissions it could not eliminate and in 2005 became the first major bank in the world to become ‘carbon neutral’.
Of course, getting its own house in order is only the first step for a bank of HSBC’s size and influence. The second, much bigger, move will be to examine how the environment feeds into the financial services it offers its 125 million customers. HSBC has already launched a business strategy to help its clients respond to the challenges and opportunities of creating a lower carbon economy.
Sat in their ultra-efficient offices in Canary Wharf, at least Williams and his colleagues will have their immediate surroundings to inspire them on that score.
But as dramatically imposing as the Torre HSBC might be, it’s not the magnitude of this 40,000 square-metre office that is turning heads. Rather, attention is focusing on its innovative design. Opened in April 2006, HSBC’s Mexican headquarters is being hailed as the most environmentally-friendly office in Latin America.
Among the building’s many eco-innovations are a rainwater collection system, a water treatment plant and a system of efficient irrigation for the Torre’s green areas. The roof is home to a veritable forest of endemic plants that require little water and help clear the city’s smog-prone atmosphere. The tower is also equipped with a device that cuts energy consumption by 40 per cent.
As a working environment, it’s a far cry from most dingy, neon-lit office spaces. Nine out of ten of the building’s 2520 workstations boast a view outside and 75 per cent are illuminated by natural light. For those that are not, the building’s architects have installed an ‘intelligent illumination system’ that automatically regulates lighting levels, thereby saving on the consumption of electricity.
In time, HSBC wants all its flagship buildings to be as eco-efficient as its Mexican headquarters. As one of the world’s largest banks, that is no small objective. It owns or occupies offices and branches in 82 countries worldwide. Under its Environmental Efficiency Programme, it intends to invest tens of millions of pounds over the next five years to improve the environmental footprint of its buildings. The funding will be used to finance a range of efficiency measures, including renewable technologies such as micro wind turbines and solar energy.
Another key element of the programme focuses on raising awareness among HSBC employees. Promoting sustainable travel and renewable technology will, it is hoped, become second nature to the company’s executives in the near future.
Finally, the programme is set to build on HBSC’s existing efforts in waste management. It intends to establish a comprehensive, company-wide system based around what Jon Williams, head of group sustainable development, calls the ‘three Rs’: reduction, re-use and recycling.
Cutting across the programme’s various activities are two guiding priorities. Firstly, projects must be easy to adopt. And secondly, they should – wherever possible – make commercial sense. ‘If you make eco-efficiency easy, people will be more inclined to do it,’ explains Williams. ‘What’s more, even if there’s no immediate pay-back, we want the programme to inform us about what technologies can be used around the world.’
As a first step, HSBC will be focusing on improving the environmental performance of 50 of its major buildings. It will use these both to benchmark the company’s total property portfolio as well as to provide a source for emerging best practice. Every year the programme will be subject to a full review, during which the success of the emerging technology and the bank’s business needs will be taken into account.
HSBC is no newcomer to sustainable construction, as its Mexican headquarters indicates. The other jewel in its crown is the bank’s global head office in Canary Wharf, central London. Designed by the world-renowned architect, Lord Norman Foster, the 45-storey building was fitted with the latest environmental efficiencies in mind. It boasts escalators that go into ‘standby’ mode when not in use as well as an intelligent lighting system – the single largest installation of its kind in Europe – which allows out of hours lighting to be controlled via an employee’s telephone. It even has a bottling plant in the basement, which helps keep the purchase of glass bottles to a minimum while diverting 150,000 tonnes of glass from landfill each year.
But where the Canary Wharf example really acts as a model for the rest of the company is its success in motivating employees to change their behavioural patterns. Personal rubbish provides a perfect case in point. In the Canary Wharf offices alone, the amount of waste going to landfill was reduced from 78 per cent to zero following the implementation of a dual bin recycling system for employee use in 2006, and the bank is looking to roll out similar schemes to all of its major UK offices.
The overall impact of these efforts in its London headquarters recently earned the building an Energy Efficiency Accreditation from the National Energy Federation. The accreditation comes after the Building Research Establishment rated the building operations and management as ‘excellent’ in its annual environmental assessment. It was the first office space in the Canary Wharf development to achieve such an accolade.
The challenge of spreading these best practices to the rest of HSBC’s offices remains considerable. First and foremost is the problem of scale. HSBC employs 312,000 people across the world. Communicating to people in different countries and different cultures is no easy task, admits Williams. To aid communication, HSBC has a number of dedicated corporate responsibility teams around the group as well as 26 sustainability risk managers in all the major regions where it operates.
Williams remains realistic about the extent to which sustainable buildings can reduce the bank’s overall footprint. Even if all its buildings resemble its flagship offices in London or Mexico, its activities will still result in carbon emissions, albeit in reduced volume.
In addition to HSBC’s in-house energy reduction and recycling initiatives, therefore, it is also investing in external carbon reduction programmes. In 2004 it began buying green electricity and carbon credits to off-set the carbon emissions it could not eliminate and in 2005 became the first major bank in the world to become ‘carbon neutral’.
Of course, getting its own house in order is only the first step for a bank of HSBC’s size and influence. The second, much bigger, move will be to examine how the environment feeds into the financial services it offers its 125 million customers. HSBC has already launched a business strategy to help its clients respond to the challenges and opportunities of creating a lower carbon economy.
Sat in their ultra-efficient offices in Canary Wharf, at least Williams and his colleagues will have their immediate surroundings to inspire them on that score.
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