CallisonRTKL (CRTKL), has announced that its project, City Centre Almaza (CCA), has received LEED-Gold certification from the US Green Building Council (USGBC). The certification was awarded to one of the biggest retail malls in Egypt commending its sustainable design, construction, and operation standards.

The project comes in line with CRTKL’s, a global consultancy specialised in architecture, design and technology  commitment to performance-driven-design organisation, applying technical advancements to enhance and optimise design solutions that contribute to a more sustainable and productive environment. With the use of sustainable strategies and designs, energy savings, water efficiency and CO2 emissions reduction, the shopping centre has been classified as one of high environmental quality.

CRTKL Shopping and Entertainment District’s Director, Nick Guy, said: “Throughout the first few years of a building’s lifetime, there is a lot of focus on the energy in use as shopping centres are heavy energy consumers. While designing the City Centre Almaza shopping centre, the design team operated with energy efficiency in mind as we saw significant opportunities for savings in line with region-wide efforts to tackle sustainability challenges.”

“One of our particular design focus areas was allowing the right amount of daylight into the building without creating unnecessary heat gain. As such, we adopted a predominately clerestory glazing strategy, keeping overhead roof-lights to a minimum. This gave good natural ambient light-levels with some shafts of sunlight allowed without compromising the environmental systems,” he concluded.