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Architects
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Location
Vitoria-Gasteiz, Álava, Spain -
Area
662.0 sqm -
Project Year
2011 -
Photographs
Text description provided by the architects. Fojansa is a company with a 15-year experience in installations of plumbing, heating and air-conditioning systems, that is committing itself strongly in the field of renewable energy research.
For the design of its head offices, they have engaged Beldarrain studio, expert in sustainable architecture, with the intention that its new corporate image may transmit their innovation purpose and their environmental concern. The proposal has adopted a clear and categorical building strategy, with a doubtless power, as concerns image, in spite of using very cheap materials.
A new body of offices, with an apparently elliptical shape, has been constructed fitting it in the former nave, leaning towards the street façade as near as allowed by the city regulations. So doing, the new body has become the protagonist of the new corporate image at the industrial development.
A thick skin made of black polyethylene pipes intertwined together as if composing a wicker basket, endows the new office body with an object-like and abstract character that contrasts with the old nave. Its rounded shape evokes organic rather than architectonic shapes, enhancing the proposal and thus standing out in the environment of the industrial development. The above-mentioned skin of intertwined pipes forms a dense lattice that protects the glass surface from the summer sun.
But this thick skin, that draws the attention of the passers-by, makes the building itself become an object of research in the field of renewable energies and of energetic efficiency. It constitutes a peculiar sun collector and energy exchanger that, combined with an 8-pit geothermic collector, reduces to a minimum the energetic consumption of the building.
With the incorporation to the project of photovoltaic panels on the roof deck of the existing naves, a building with positive energetic balance is achieved.
