By Bernard Ramos
IN the past few years, visitors to the Mall of Asia Complex in Pasay City have witnessed a different kind of visual spectacle apart from the famed sights of Manila Bay and the entertainment activities seen in the mall.
The area has become a destination known for its distinctive landmarks and structures, beginning with the E-com office buildings. Concentrated in the southern portion of the prime seaside property, the E-com business hub boasts of truly unique and eye-catching architecture that create a different skyline compared to the familiar high-rise ones in Makati, Ortigas or even Bonifacio Global City.
“First of all, the bayside area has limitations in terms of height of structures since it is in close proximity to the Manila international airport,” explained Dave Rafael, senior vice president of SM Prime and head of its Commercial Properties Group.
In the end, the challenge posed by this limitation ended up as SM’s asset in its vision of creating a world-class business district in a new, emerging area within Metro Manila. What it could not achieve in terms of building height, SM made up for in terms of design, ingeniously utilizing traditional concrete, steel, glass and aluminum into striking and daring geometric forms.
21st-century bayside business district
The masterplan of the E-com business hub is composed of five buildings on a grid of square lots of more than 10,000 square meters each. An expansion to include a sixth building is already being eyed.
The E-com buildings are especially designed and engineered with features that suit the burgeoning business-process outsourcing (BPO) market, such as open floor plans and wide floor plates, reliable power and telecommunications utilities, and advantageous location near Mall of Asia.
The first in the series, OneE-comCenter, was completed in 2008 and set the trend with its simple but futuristic cubic design. It is a building that boasts of convenient entrances and drive-up lobbies on all four sides, maximizing interior space, as well.
TwoE-comCenter followed suit in 2012 with an even bolder design—a mixed-use twin tower edifice connected on the top three floors, as well as on a seventh floor podium that houses a 5,000-sq-m retail and entertainment open space dubbed Prism Plaza.
SM fast-tracked the third building in the plan and just last year, completed FiveE-comCenter, an impressive 15-story structure similarly consisting of two towers joined at a sprawling podium level.
Designs of the future
Arquitectonica’s take on the E-com buildings is definitely futuristic and avant-garde. “These are the types of designs one would find in progressive cities abroad, maybe like Shanghai or Dubai,” Rafael said.
“It finally helps place Manila on the map of international building design, and gives both local and multinational locators a premier address,” he added, specifically citing BPO companies. “We have moved from an image of BPO companies as mere call centers to knowledge-management companies and shared services firms.”
Some of E-com’s prestigious pioneer tenants include the biggest BPO firms in the country, such as TeleTech, EXL, Teleperformance, Altisource and Convergys. E-com is also home to the shared service groups of famous brands, such as Xerox, Visa and Telstra.
With its proximity to the bay area, E-com has also attracted a niche market of shipping and logistics companies, like Maersk, APL, OOCL, Anscor Swire, CMA CGM, and Klaveness. In 2013 TwoE-com was recognized as the Best Office Building Development in the Philippines by the prestigious International Property Awards based in the UK.
Even more ambitious are SM’s sketches for the upcoming ThreeE-comCenter and FourE-comCenter. ThreeE-com is already under construction, and boasts of Pre-Certified LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold status through features such as 100 percent use of LED lighting and gray water recycling.
In terms of building design and amenities, ThreeE-com utilizes available sunlight whenever possible, and encourages smarter transportation by providing bike racks. Rafael said that FourE-com continues its thrust toward “greener” office buildings, further adding improvements on sustainable features as much as possible.
“Those looking for the future of doing business in Metro Manila need not look any further.”