Lerch Bates to engineer movement across MOON smart city masterplans

Toronto, Canada - Moon World Resorts has hired Lerch Bates as vertical and horizontal transportation engineers and multidisciplinary engineers on all of its MOON Smart City masterplans, the two companies announced on 10 November.

According to Moon World Resorts, the consultancy will decide how guests reach, travel up and down, move around and leave each development, and how its buildings perform.

The developer called the brief a challenging one. It takes in vertical and horizontal transportation, pedestrian circulation and building logistics, together with parking design, the building enclosure, façade access and wayfinding.

Lerch Bates traces its history to 1947, when it was set up as the first elevator consultancy in the US. A logistics practice, also an industry first, followed in 1984, and in 1985 it became the first consultancy dedicated to façade access.

Since 1986 the firm has been an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan), so every member of its team is also an owner.

Its vertical and horizontal transportation specialists have worked on towers such as Burj Khalifa in Dubai, currently the tallest building in the world, and Taipei 101 in Taiwan.

On MOON, Lerch Bates will be involved from design and construction through to management and later modernisation of each building.

The work it will carry out includes modelling, planning and writing specifications for elevators and escalators, simulating pedestrian movement and crowd safety, and planning loading docks, receiving areas and waste management.

The firm will also take on parking layouts and wayfinding, façade access systems at all heights and the building enclosure, from cladding and glazing to roofing and waterproofing.

Sandra G. Matthews, Co-Founder and President of Moon World Resorts, said: “MOON will welcome 10 million guests annually; every one of them will begin and end their journey in motion. How they rise and flow forms part of the magic, it must feel effortless. Lerch Bates has spent nearly eighty years mastering the movement of people through the world’s most iconic buildings.”

“We are delighted to welcome their brilliant team to MOON, and we are inspired by the care, ownership and optimism they bring to everything they do. As with our entire global team, we have chosen the right partner with the necessary depth, experience and vision,” she added.

Jeff Marsh, Executive Vice President of Studio|LB at Lerch Bates, said: “MOON represents the kind of ambitious, complex project where Lerch Bates is at our best. Bringing together movement, logistics, building performance and the guest experience at this scale requires true multidisciplinary thinking.”

Lerch Bates describes itself as a global multidisciplinary technical consultancy that improves the performance, design and lifecycle of buildings and of the wider built environment. Alongside transportation and logistics, it works on enclosures and structures, forensics and façade access, backed by lifecycle services spanning several disciplines.

“Our employee-owners are proud to bring nearly 80 years of expertise to the team and help create an experience that is not only extraordinary for guests, but intuitive, efficient and built to perform for generations,” he added.

Moon World Resorts says each MOON Smart City will sit on a 556-acre masterplan built around what it calls the world’s largest true architectural sphere, combining hospitality, entertainment, wellbeing, education, space tourism, luxury residences and AAA commercial real estate.

The developer plans MOON destinations across nine regions: North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Oceania and East, South and Southeast Asia.

The Lerch Bates appointment follows Moon World Resorts’ hiring of Smith + Andersen in October to handle mechanical, electrical and integrated systems design across the MOON masterplans.