Parc Glòries Office Building

The following project is a 30,733 sq. meter office building to let at Barcelona's 22@ technological district. It is 17 story high and is currently the largest one of its kind in the district. The ground floor is a longitudinal element offering an elevation towards street. It also hosts the landing of the exterior emergency staircases on both ends and a porch occupying the block's chamfers that continues towards the rear elevation facing the park. This longitudinal element holds the main access to offices, a hall destined for a gym, service rooms and the ramp leading to the underground car-park. Floors 1 to 8 occupy the whole length of the building and have the same configuration: open plans with a compact communication and services core, towards street. Exterior emergency staircases are located on both ends. Floors 9 to 16 occupy almost ¾ of the building's length, setting back the front towards Tanger street. These upper floors are set out in the same way as the lower ones, providing open plan office spaces, compact communication cores and exterior emergency staircases at both ends. The 9th floor has access to the roof of the 8th floor providing an exterior area for the whole building. The 16th floor is conceived for a single tenant and is set back further away from Tanger street to generate a private terrace. The 17th floor is destined to technical services and elevator machinery rooms. The PARC GLORIES project has been designed to obtain a maximum environmental qualification: LEED Platinum certification. 3 large areas group the basic design criteria: Savings (material, energy, and water resources) Environmental quality (minimizing exterior and interior polluting agents, space quality regarding natural light, material comfort and air quality) and providing the building with the necessary facilities to foster its user's health, its sustainable use and contributing to the environment (terraces and biophylic spaces, spaces that promote recycling, facilities that foster the use of nonpolluting transportation, common elements encouraging sport and healthcare and resting areas in touch with nature and open air. Energy saving criteria have concentrated on minimizing consumption and solar control through a carefully designed envelope (a double skin filters solar radiation and maximizes natural light on all of its elevations and orientations, and a roof avoiding the heat island effect through the use of materials that reflect solar radiation and has a minimum thermal mass) and through thorough consumption saving, both in light and conditioning. At Batlleiroig we strongly believe that the best saving relies in the minimum use of artificial conditioning. Environmental quality is ensured through rigorous control of materials deployed in construction; both during the building period and final finishing. At Batlleiroig we are committed to demand materials with certified sustainable origin, minimizing the environmental footprint through the use of local materials and, when possible, encouraging recycling and the use of recycled materials. All vegetable based claddings are carefully chosen, demanding certified sustainable forest management and traceability. Non organic materials are chosen according to their volatile particle non-emissions. All these contribute to air quality directly affecting the user's health. User's health is tightly bonded to the building's ability to relate and interact with nature. This implies that the building is not alien to circadian rhythm, allowing natural light into all spaces -including bathrooms- and allowing direct visual contact with natural vegetation through terraces and planters flooding with greenery the rear elevation. At Batlleiroig we are convinced that a biophilic building does not only foster the well-being and mood of its users but it also contributes to their productivity and their working performance. Resource saving has been approached from two different strategies: in the first place, minimizing the use of water resources, through the reduction of the spending in all bathrooms and fittings and the use of low water demanding plant species. In second place, by collecting rain water through pipes and tanks on the roofs. This action collects up to 50m3 of water for the irrigation of the whole building's vegetation. The Parc Glòries building has been dealt at Batlleiroig as an exercise in honesty and rigor, where sustainability criteria have centered around reasonable use and cutting down resource consumption rather than complex solutions dependent on domotics systems. We firmly belief in logic sustainability, in one which promotes user involvement and rewards its interaction with nature providing health and well-being. We know that a well conceived and built architecture is the best way to contribute to reduce the environmental impact of our buildings.