Technology
Bringing Technology to the Tenant Experience The CODA Building
World’s largest spiral staircase at the CODA building. Photo Credit :Portman Management
By: Jacob Ruppel, Portman Management When it comes to the topic of tenant experience, CODA is doing something a little different. John Portman Jr. believed in the ideas of collaboration and innovation. John Portman and Associates designed a building based solely on those two principles. The roughly 700,000 sq ft. office building located at 756 West Peachtree St. brings something to our tenants they have never seen before. Our collaborative core is 17 floors of common area connected by a stunning continuous spiral staircase which tenants can travel from floor to floor. Broken into six different “neighborhoods,” the core offers unique and vibrant spaces to work, play, or relax. Our customers have taken exceedingly well to this space. Portman wanted to forge an environment to inspire creativity through collaboration. This collaboration happens when all parties can openly share ideas, which happens best when everyone is relaxed. We designed spaces where the comforts of home are here in the workplace. We made it a more natural habitat for our tenants in every way possible, understanding that everyone is different. The various types of work/ break areas mirror our uniqueness and allow everyone to find their home in space in CODA. You can see on a walk through of CODA tenants are gathered around a whiteboard to solve X in an equation filling the entire board. On another floor, a group of co-workers breaking bread with members from another company, all enjoying a bite from one of our restaurants in the Collective Food Hall. And still, on another floor, you can find your solo habitants taking a minute to get away from it all and take in the incredible view of Georgia Tech Campus from 20 stories above street level. Scenes such as exciting, dynamic spaces (the swings on the 9th floor) and inviting niches (the banquet cubes on the 12th floor) create this nurturing environment for people to come together.
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Tenant Experience Guide | October 2021
The second principle is innovation. We wanted to do something that has never been done before and encourages others to do the same. Since the beginning, Portman held conversations with our anchor tenant, Georgia Institute of Technology, about energy efficiency in an office building. The bridging of a tech-forward clientele and a Platinum energy-rated office building began to emerge. With the combination of new, state-of-the-art technology and time-tested energy practices, Portman created a one-of-a-kind building that can finally provide the data necessary for our tenants to push forward into the ever-growing effort to save energy. The idea was a single pane of glass. We desired more intelligent control and management over our assets and facilities, but we wanted to do this through one platform. This approach is where the Hepta team and their EntroCim product came into play. We applied the same principles they created for data centers around the country. Hepta created a first-of-its-kind software solution providing facility stakeholders with all the information they need to ensure the safe, optimized operation of the most critical aspects of our property. EntroCim is not new technology, and Hepta has been growing it for a while now. We use this analytical platform to control our building systems and provide a customer portal where the building tenants can see energy consumption and building operations. This technology provided what CODA needed for the relationship and insight our tenants wanted. They can view space conditions and complex equipment operations for research purposes. Chilled beams and hydronic heating and cooling are some of the timetested technologies used in the CODA building and are still considered one of the most efficient and consistent ways of controlling space temp. Sensors and pump modules (a package consisting of a pump, a VFD, and an actuating valve package) are used to sample and measure tenant areas then fed into the algorithm that decides what temperature water is required to heat or cool. Pack this technology in with the two heat recovery Chillers, which recover energy from the condenser to heat the
