Projects

Menlo Gateway Development

Menlo Gateway Development

Menlo Park, California
United States
Menlo

This 15.9-acre development, spread across two sites, is being developed by Bohannon Development.

The project, once built, will encompass three office and R&D buildings (694,669 ft²), a hotel (171,563 ft²; 230 rooms), a health club to serve hotel guests and the public (68,519 ft²), a restaurant (4,245 ft²), neighborhood-serving retail and community facilities (10,420 ft²), and three parking structures.

This innovative mixed-use project strives toward resiliency, energy efficiency, and beauty by reappropriating industrial land and emphasizing sustainable building practices and green construction materials. The success of this ambitious project rests upon the aligned values and collaborative efforts of the entire design team. Menlo Gateway will not only use 40% less water and 24% less energy than standard mixed-use construction, but by doing so, it will also significantly reduce the buildings’ operating costs.

Introba (formerly Integral Group) is providing sustainability consulting, including LEED, energy, and water strategies, as well as full mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering services, energy modeling, commissioning, daylighting, and lighting design for the project. Our sustainability team also completed a WELL Feasibility Study for the first phase of the offices.

The team’s daylighting models provided optimal orientations for the buildings to maximize daylight integration (and reduce the need for electrical lighting). To further minimize the energy consumption of Menlo Gateway, we designed an HVAC system that decouples ventilation from heating and cooling. This significantly reduces the size of the fans necessary to ventilate the facility. Moreover, the air handler units contain heat recovery wheels, which absorb heat from the exhaust air and subsequently transfer it to the supply air entering the building as they rotate. This reduces the load on the hydronic system and translates into significant energy savings.

In tandem with integrated daylighting design, Introba provided electric lighting design services to create an energy-efficient and dynamic building façade for this mixed-use 1,000,000 ft² development. The team’s approach considered the lighting design a supplemental move, assuming daylight to be the primary illumination source in all workspaces. By first tuning the glazing and shading specifications, the electric lighting became a subtle layer intended to balance illumination levels in the evening and overcast hours and to offer a nighttime marker of the building form against the evening sky. With the façade glass designed to optimize daylight, the nighttime experience of the façade is primarily driven by the play of precisely lit interior elements glowing through the skin. As time transitions from day to night, the exterior reflections of the sun and sky in the glass fade to inner reflections of electric light and interior surfaces.

The Independence Office building and Hotel Nia were both completed in spring 2018. WRNS invited Introba to partner on a tenant improvement portion of the development. The 500,000 ft² Independence Office building is being prepared for occupation by a large technology client.

Sustainability

  • LEED Gold Certified

Image Credit: Scott Hargis Photo

Awards
Structures Award - Best Hospitality Project, 2018
Silicon Valley Business Journal
Structures Award - Best Office/R&D Deal, 2018
Silicon Valley Business Journal
Best Projects, Residential/Hospitality, 2018
Engineering News-Record (ENR), California

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