The Hallmark poised to serve as prime business hub in HCMC

The Hallmark green office building in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s economic powerhouse, is ready to open and officially welcome tenants this June.

The Grade A+ office building has Singapore's Green Mark (Gold) green building certificate. The A+ standard is only awarded to the highest quality office buildings on the market.

It is a rating system designed to evaluate a building’s environmental impact and performance. It provides a comprehensive framework for assessing the overall environmental performance of new and existing buildings to promote sustainable design, and best practices in construction and operations in buildings. The system has four ratings: Certified, Gold, Gold Plus, and Platinum.

With a floor space of 68,000 square meters, The Hallmark is part of the 7.6-hectare Metropole development project in Thu Thiem New Urban Area on the other side of the Saigon River.

The new tower sits at Thu Thiem's doorway, close to Ba Son Bridge, which opened to traffic in late April 2022 with its original name - Thu Thiem 2 Bridge. The other end of the bridge is in District 1, the heart of HCMC.

Thu Thiem New Urban Area is HCMC’s new central business district. It is connected to the established districts 1 and 3 via multiple boulevards, Ba Son Bridge, Thu Thiem Bridge, Thu Thiem Tunnel, and HCMC’s metro line No.1. More bridges are already planned to span the river to the new urban area.

With 26 floors of office space and four floors of commercial space, The Hallmark provides a modern working environment. Its floor plates range from 1,600 to 2,300 square meters, giving flexibility to tenants, whether small startups or multinational corporations.

The Hallmark prioritizes health and lifestyle experiences with chill-out spaces for tenants to enjoy. The 5th-floor podium’s lush gardens provide a lively outdoor space with panoramic views of District 1 and the Saigon River.

The Hallmark uses 20 Schindler high-speed elevators equipped with the latest artificial intelligence-driven load-balancing technology to minimize waiting times. Sixteen elevators serve the lower (1-16) and upper (17-29) floors. Three elevators facilitate transit between the basement floors and the ground floor. A final service elevator aims to minimize workplace disruptions while providing large cargo access to the entire building.

Three basement floors have been allocated for parking. Electric vehicle charging stations are integrated into each garage floor. Drivers can take advantage of the bike room, a driver's lounge, and bathrooms with a washroom.

The Hallmark holds immense potential and promise within the HCMC office marketplace, said Troy Griffiths, deputy CEO of property services firm Savills Vietnam.

The Hallmark is owned by Vietnamese property developer Gateway Thu Thiem and managed by Savills. It is supervised by Ryan Lower, senior managing director of Gateway Thu Thiem, who holds vast experience in supervising several Grade A buildings in HCMC like Deutsches Haus, Saigon Center 2, and Sunwah Tower.

According to CBRE, another property services firm, the core difference offered by The Hallmark is the large floor area, from 1,600 to 2,300 square meters, to provide tenants with more flexibility in office design. Its office ceiling height is 2.75 m, not to mention a raised floor and column-free design, maximizing natural light and optimizing the view.

The entire exterior is covered with high-grade SYP double-layer glass with 30 millimeters in insulation, soundproofing, and ultra-violet protection. The tower’s passive cooling system helps reduce the energy and electricity consumption.

Passive cooling is a building design approach that focuses on heat gain control and heat dissipation in a building in order to improve indoor thermal comfort with low or no energy consumption. This approach works either by preventing heat from entering the interior or by removing heat from the building, which is called natural cooling.