Austin-San Marcos, TX (1888PressRelease)
April 14, 2008 - The new Austin campus for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. – designed by Austin architecture and interior design firm GS&C – received the Office Winner award April 9 at the Austin Business Journal’s Best Real Estate Awards program.
GS&C is the architect of the 865,000-square-foot, $270 million Lone Star campus, which comprises four office buildings and a central amenities building. The campus, which officially opened in early 2008 on a 59-acre site in Austin’s Oak Hill area, allowed AMD to consolidate its offices and employees in the Austin region. AMD is a global supplier of integrated circuits for personal and networked computing and communications.
Tom Cornelius, principal-in-charge at GS&C, says: “GS&C is honored to be involved in the AMD’s Lone Star campus and to be part of the team recognized for this phenomenal project. This office campus creates a legacy for development of future commercial real estate projects in the Austin area.”
“Most notably, the Lone Star campus takes into account the environmental concerns voiced by a variety of people,” Cornelius says. “The campus is a testament to the stewardship of AMD, GS&C and everyone else involved in bringing this project from blueprints to an environmentally sound footprint.”
The project’s architecture, design and engineering team is pursuing LEED Gold certification for the new AMD campus. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System, operated by the U.S. Green Building Council, is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. LEED Gold is the second-highest level available in the point-based LEED rating system.
An array of green measures were incorporated into the AMD campus. Each building’s roof collects rainwater in a series of cisterns totaling 360,000 gallons that are used for irrigation of the site’s 100 percent native landscaping. Overflow from these systems is collected in a 1.1-million-gallon underground tank that provides some of the water for the cooling towers of the campus mechanical system.
Other environmentally sensitive features of the project include:
-- 100 percent renewable energy from the Austin Energy Green Choice program.
-- 100 percent structured parking, eliminating all surface lots.
-- Natural day lighting in all of the office buildings, using exterior sunshades and tandem light shelves on the interior.
“The Lone Star office campus demonstrates that a Fortune 500 company like AMD and a full-service architectural and interior design firm like GS&C can successfully produce a major real estate project built on solid environmental and economic principles,” Cornelius says.
GS&C, based in Austin, Texas, specializes in high-quality, client-focused architecture and interior design services for the technology, education, corporate, healthcare and finance and sectors. For more information, visit www.gsc-inc.com.
Media contact:
John Egan
UpWord Communications
512-799-1022
john ( @ ) upwordcommunications dot com
