Project Brief
KeRi designed the HVAC systems for WeWork's South of Fifth location at 429 Lenox Avenue in Miami Beach, and modelled the work in Revit.
A co-working floor is not one room. The five levels hold roughly 209 private offices, phone booths, nooks, pantries, a wellness room, and conference rooms of several sizes, and any of them can be full or empty at any hour. Rather than one large air system, the design gives the plan small-duct high-velocity fan coils, each paired with its own heat pump and zoned with motorised modulating dampers, so a room is conditioned when it is used and left alone when it is not. Loads were calculated room by room, and both water-cooled and air-cooled heat pump schedules were issued so the equipment could work with either a condenser water loop or air-source condensers.
Ventilation is carried separately. Dedicated outside air fan coils, each with a pair of heat pumps, temper the outside air before it reaches the space, sized at five CFM per person plus 0.06 CFM per square foot at 80 percent occupancy, around 43 tons of outside air cooling in total. The IT rooms were given their own split system so they do not depend on the occupied-space equipment.
The whole design was built in Revit against the architect's model, with the equipment and small duct routed through a tight ceiling level by level and hanging details issued for the air handler and heat pump modules.
MEP Engineering Scope
What We Engineered
HVAC design and BIM modelling for the five-level fit-out:
- Small-duct high-velocity fan coils, each on its own heat pump
- Motorised modulating zone dampers and plenum slot registers
- Water-cooled and air-cooled heat pump schedules
- Dedicated outside air fan coils with paired heat pumps
- Room-by-room load and ventilation calculations
- Dedicated split cooling for the IT rooms
- Revit model, three-dimensional coordination, and equipment support details
Systems
01Cooling and Heating
- Small-duct high-velocity fan coils zoned to the plan, each paired with its own heat pump
- Water-cooled and air-cooled heat pump schedules both issued, so the units could sit on a condenser water loop or on air-source condensers
- Motorised modulating zone dampers on insulated round duct, with plenum slot registers at roughly 26 to 33 CFM per outlet
- Room-by-room load calculation across every office, booth, and meeting room on the five levels
- Dedicated split system for the IT rooms, independent of the occupied-space equipment
02Ventilation
- Dedicated outside air fan coils, each with a pair of heat pumps, serving the first, fourth, and fifth levels
- Outside air calculated at 5 CFM per person plus 0.06 CFM per square foot, at 80 percent occupancy
- Roughly 43 tons of outside air cooling, tempered before it reaches the space
- Insulated single-wall outside air duct with manual volume dampers for balancing
03BIM
- Revit model of the existing building and the new work, built alongside the architect's model
- Equipment and duct routed in three dimensions through a tight ceiling, level by level
- Hanging and support details issued for the air handler and heat pump modules
- Rendered views used to review the installation before it was built
The Challenge
A co-working building runs on unpredictable occupancy: two hundred private offices, booths, and meeting rooms that fill and empty independently through the day. One central system would have conditioned the whole floor to suit whichever rooms happened to be busy, and the ceiling had little room to run conventional ductwork.
Our Solution
KeRi zoned the building finely instead, small-duct high-velocity fan coils each paired with a heat pump and controlled by motorised dampers, so conditioning follows use rather than a single setpoint, with outside air handled separately and tempered before it reaches the space. The small duct fits where conventional ductwork would not, and the whole installation was modelled in Revit against the architect's model before it was built.
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