Ayala Triangle, Tower One and Makati Stock Exchange, Manila, Philippines

Architect: Skidmore Owings & Merrill, San Francisco

Ayala Triangle is the corporate Headquarters for the Ayala Corporation, the oldest and one of the largest business houses in the Philippines. They are involved in almost all facets of life in the P.I., including banking, finance, insurance, real estate, hotels, automotive, food products, telecommunications and contract manufacturing. Ayala Triangle is also the home for the Makati Stock Exchange which is located in the podium building in the lower right of the picture to the left. The building is the only class A+ office building in the Philippines, with many international banks and stock brokerage companies based there. Mr. Sellars was the local principal in Acoustics and Telecommunications for this project in Manila, while he was based in Hong Kong. The project was completed in 1996. Primary design responsibility was handled out of the head office of his employer (Shen Milsom & Wilke) in New York. However, as the head of the Asia-Pacific office of SM&W, he had day-to-day responsibility for coordinating construction activities, re-design of systems based on site conditions and commissioning of the many systems in this complex building.

Ayala Group has its offices in the top 14 floors of the building, including a penthouse suite for the current CEO, Don Jaime de Zobel de Ayala.

Dual redundant optical fibre backbones are run throughout the building and to the many telecommunications rooms serving the office areas and the Stock Exchange floor. Mr. Sellars was responsible for amending the design of the base-building telecommunications infrastructure to support a multi-service provider environment. A central office telephone exchange is located in the base of the building so as to provide services directly to the tenants of the building. Acoustical issues were numerous, including providing noise abatement for a 6.7MVA prime power generator plant located adjacent to the car park under the public plaza. Other noise control issues handled by Mr. Sellars included a group of screw compressors located in the mechanical floor indicated by a ‘band’ in the picture below