Warsaw UNIT, Ghelamco’s high-rise building is the first building in Poland to be awarded WELL Certification rating at the highest possible level of Platinum.
Warsaw UNIT is the first building in Poland to achieve WELL Certification at the Platinum level under the WELL v2 pilot. The office tower with a height of over 200m had earlier also been awarded a WELL Health-Safety Rating, which covers the health, safety and well-being of a building’s users.
“We are proud that Warsaw UNIT is the only building in Poland to have received WELL Certification with a level of Platinum. Such a distinction demonstrates our commitment to sustainable development and our compliance with ESG standards. We strive to create spaces that not only meet the needs of business but also take care of the health, comfort and well-being of building users. The Platinum level WELL Core Certification for Warsaw UNIT demonstrates that our building offers the highest standards in sustainable design and that we are the leader in this field in Poland”, says Jarosław Zagórski, the managing director of Ghelamco Poland.
WELL is a multi-criteria system for certifying buildings intended to demonstrate the highest regard for the health and workplace comfort of building users. For a building to receive a rating of Platinum, it has to fulfil the highest standards in a number of fields including air quality, water, light, movement, thermal comfort, acoustics and materials. Warsaw UNIT met over 100 requirements intended to ensure the best conditions for building users. Across the CEE region, only in Romania can two buildings certified with a rating of Platinum be found, while three other countries each have one such building: Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Now Poland has also joined this group.
“We congratulate Ghelamco for achieving WELL Core Certification under the WELL v2 pilot for the Warsaw UNIT skyscraper, the first project in Poland to be certified at the Platinum level”, said Ann Marie Aguilar, Senior Vice President, EMEA, at the International WELL Building Institute. “This Platinum level certification builds on Ghelamco’s earlier achievement of the WELL Health-Safety Rating, and alongside partners like Sweco, demonstrates outstanding leadership and a commitment to prioritizing the health and well-being of everyone who enters the building”.
In Poland over 100 buildings have applied for full WELL certification, while over 200 buildings are competing for either WELL Certification or the WELL Health-Safety Rating. The Warsaw UNIT skyscraper now has both of these distinctions.
“Being awarded WELL Core Certification under the WELL v2 pilot with the highest possible level of Platinum required huge engagement from the investor, the designers, the contractors and the building managers. It is the effect of the long hard work of a large team. We are pleased that we could provide the support of our experience and can now jointly celebrate this success,” says Daniel Hojniak, the team manager responsible for WELL AP, LEED AP, BREEAM AP at Sweco Polska. “Ghelamco’s ambition was to use the WELL v2 pilot, the latest version of the WELL Building Standard, which has been greatly extended. Warsaw UNIT is the first building in Poland to have been submitted for such certification. Furthermore, it was part of the pilot programme created by the IWBI certification body for design teams that are ready to blaze the trail in this regard. The experience gained through the certification of Warsaw UNIT has had a direct effect on the current form of the criteria selected for the final version of WELL v2, which is now being used by over 20,000 projects across the entire world”.
With 46 stories and 59,000 sqm of office space, Warsaw UNIT claims to be the most environmentally friendly and technologically advanced skyscraper in Poland. It was the first high-rise building in Poland to receive a BREEAM green certificate with the highest possible Outstanding rating. Its sustainability is also confirmed by certification in the WELL Platinum, WELL Health-Safety Rating, WELL v2 (pre-certification), Green Standard Building and “Barrier-Free Facility” systems.
The energy consumption in Warsaw UNIT is nearly 30% lower than in comparable high-rise buildings. Warsaw UNIT will also be the first skyscraper in Poland to be powered 100% by clean energy. This comes after Ghelamco announced a project to build its own photovoltaic farms.
