Helios Plaza

OWNER

British Petroleum

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Size: 391,000 SF

Parking Garage: 2,000 spaces

Architect: Gensler

Feature: first Houston LEED Platinum project

Helios Plaza

Houston
Texas

British Petroleum (BP) had a short but specific list of goals in mind when they planned to expand their presence in West Houston with a top tier trading facility. First, the building must provide a wide open trading floor with high ceilings to allow traders the best possible views, which helped achieve their second goal of attracting the best traders. Another necessity was to ensure their operations remained protected even in the midst of a hurricane, so the building was designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane. Lastly, as a global leader in the energy field and a supporter of sustainable environments, BP wanted the building to be LEED certified.

This seven-story office building features a ground-floor lobby that converts into a state-of-the-art assembly space and a two-story open trading floor with 25’ tall ceilings. This LEED Platinum building exceeds sustainability requirements with a 400,000 gallon water harvesting cistern, site utilization of 55% native and adaptive plantings, and onsite natural gas generation to name a few. The water harvesting system was in addition to a water feature that provided water natural planters as quality filters designed in collaboration with the architect and landscape architect.

As the Structural engineer, Walter P Moore developed the wind load design in conjunction with the owner to reduce the original requested design loads by 10% without compromising the level of resiliency desired.