Rethink, rebuild, reimagine

Rethink, rebuild, reimagine

Laying the foundations for better buildings

At a glance

Podcast

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Rethink, rebuild, reimagine. Richard Mylles and William Nicolle on sustainable building

23:37

Richard Mylles and William Nicolle discuss the crucial role of creating better buildings to deliver sustainable outcomes, particularly the need for a whole-value-chain approach to help deliver on the goals of the Paris Agreement.

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Discover more insights about laying the foundation for better buildings in our white paper.

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UBS's sustainable buildings

We’re LEEDing the way

Be it installing energy-efficient LED lighting in offices, water-efficient irrigation systems for landscaped areas or turning roofs into power plants, we’re doing a lot to make our UBS buildings green. In fact, we've committed to an ambitious goal: that all our main buildings are certified according to green standards, including those of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), an international benchmark for sustainable construction worldwide. This certification covers criteria such as the sustainability of sites, water efficiency, energy, materials, resources and environmental quality and can be applied to buildings and construction projects, interior design, operations and maintenance processes as well as neighborhood development.

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    LEED-certified premises worldwide, meeting the highest sustainability standards

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    LEED platinum certified premises worldwide (highest accolade)

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    approx. number of electric car charging stations across 32 countries

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    our commitment to source all electricity from renewables

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    beehives across 7 green roofs globally

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    existing and upcoming rooftop solar plants

Global success

LEED certification comes in four colors, certified, silver, gold and platinum. For new buildings, we aim for gold certification, but quite often, we’re even more successful. We received LEED Platinum certifications for our headquarters in Zurich after its renovation in 2017, for our UBS offices in Mumbai and Pune in 2018 and UBS offices in Wuxi in 2016. And, in Mexico, our office space has been LEED Platinum certified since 2017. Our new offices in Singapore and Fabryczna offices in Krakow are the latest buildings to be LEED platinum certified.

Setting standards in our industry

While our headquarters in Switzerland is LEED Platinum certified, we build and renovate other office spaces according to the Swiss Minergie sustainability standard. Our 5 Broadgate building in London has the British BREEAM Excellent status for the base build and LEED Platinum status for the fit-out.

National standards can even prove to be more suitable for some buildings: we obtained the BD2M Gold environmental rating for our Grand Bretagne 2 building in Monaco. This was originally built in the late 19th century, and we were able to preserve its Belle Epoque facade. BD2M is an environmental label which focuses on the local situation in Monaco – considering the weather conditions (e.g., saline winds coming from the sea), soil, geographical aspects and territorial heritage – as well as internationally accepted social and environmental standards.