Project Description

Located on Bay Road, the Megabus office building is a striking addition to the developing Bay Road Business Precinct.

This 4 storey, 1800m2 office building is the new home of Megabus, a local software company founded over twenty five years ago in Cheltenham.

The design of the sleek metallic and glass surface of the building was inspired by the silvery blue skin of a deep-sea marlin, and  references the branding imagery of the company’s principal software product , Marlin Software.

Set back from the street, and screened by a pair of large trees, the north facing blue and green glass façade forms an impressive triple height entrance atrium, which acts as an environmental screen, capturing the sun in winter and insulating the offices in summer.

The U shaped plan of the building  has been arranged  arranged with all the solid spaces such as lift and stair cores, service rooms and staff kitchens, hard up against the neighbouring concrete wall on the eastern boundary, allowing three facades to have an unobstructed 180 degree outlook.  Along the western face of the building, open terraces have been cut into the envelope of the building, allowing light and ventilation to reach into the inner areas of the open plan office floors , and creating central outdoor areas for relaxation on each level.

Environmentally, the external envelope performs extremely well as it uses a similar construction system to refrigerated cold rooms, metal clad urethane foam composite wall panels. Windows are glazed with high performance glass and are strategically placed to respond to the various orientations. The North facing glass façade, whilst benefitting from the natural shading provided by the two large existing trees, acts as a double skin conservatory, insulating the offices yet providing maximum daylight and outlook. Rainwater is captured and used for flushing toilets as well as landscape irrigation. The entire lighting system uses energy efficient, flat plate LED luminaires.