Overland Partners, a mid-sized architecture with an international portfolio, relocated its offices to the former Hughes Warehouse in San Antonio’s River North Area. Cleary Zimmermann Engineers provided MEP design services for the original warehouse conversion to offices, and later for an office expansion within the existing shell. Throughout both projects constant communication and coordination was essential because the architectural design team was both the client and tenant.
For the original renovation, we used a rooftop unit mounted carefully over the preexisting wooden columns to condition the air in the space with exposed ducting throughout. Our team routed fire protection piping and used a high efficiency instantaneous water heater. We included a daylighting control system consisting of power shades that lowered automatically throughout the day. We also added low flow fixtures in the restrooms. Extra coordination was required to bring utilities to the smaller, open-air glass-walled conference rooms located throughout the larger office.
For the later expansion, our team provided a new roof top unit to serve the new office space and large conference room. We added a vibration isolation RTU curb to reduce the impact of the vibrations from the HVAC system into the office space. The open structure lighting followed the pattern of the remaining office. We heavily coordinated all of the conduit pathways because they were all exposed.
Image Source: ©Dror Baldinger, AIA Achitectural Photography LLC, Overland Partners
