On the top of world (well, Brisbane at least!)

Last week we had the opportunity to meet with Darren McCosker from Nielson Properties.  Nielson is a property investment business that specialises in commercial office properties and Darren showed us around one of their showcase properties, Santos Place.  Santos Place is home of Petronas in Brisbane and owned by Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), a Malaysian based fund.  Not only that, it has a 6 star energy efficiency rating (it was the largest 6 star building in Australia until recently).

Given the Australia-Malaysia links between Nielson and PNB, Darren invited us along as the AMBCQ to be the 3,000th visitors to have the corporate tour of the building (technically, Kiong was the 3,000th, I suppose I was 3,001st).  And Kiong also had the opportunity to speak to Chris from the Courier Mail and we had a photographer, Adam, join us on the tour.  The article, which appeared in the property section of last Thursday's Courier Mail, was about the public's interest in our local architecture.  However, Kiong still managed to sneak in an AMBCQ mention!

The tour is very impressive. Every manner of energy saving, water saving, energy producing, environmentally friendly measure that one can think of is part of the design of this building. Natural gas supplies most of the building's base energy needs, there was a whole stack of water tanks, and the roof was lined with solar tubes.  I probably have missed half of the features out.  There were a lot of smaller innovations too which complemented these bigger energy efficiency measures.

The views are astonishing - the building is situated on Turbot Street and the views from the 36th floor (and from the roof) are just amazing. From the 36th floor you can see out over the Art Gallery, GOMA and Convention Centre at South Bank.  From the roof you can see the whole city, and right out to Stradbroke Island.  And with the river snaking below, the City just looks so charming.

We got to walk across a small walkway between the two sides of Level 36, which was great.  And right up to the roof with all the solar tubes. What a great privilege. No wonder the building is also used as a showcase of Brisbane itself, as well as a showcase of energy efficient building techniques.

On the way out, we had the chance to see another aspect of the building's design.  If you know where Santos Place is, you'll know that the Kurilpa Bridge, the pedestrian bridge across to South Brisbane, is almost at its base.  This facet has also been incorporated into the design of the building and the bridge almost straight into the building, down into the lower level which has room for 300 bikes.  There are lockers, showers, a dry cleaning service, and a bike guy who comes in regularly to make repairs.  And it wasn't one of those ideas that seems smart but no one actually uses it  - it was about 3 pm in the afternoon when we were down there and the place was full of bikes!!