R&D+i Headquarters for Local Sustainability in Badajoz

HEADLINE

The aim of the project is both monitor and stimulate the environmental
sustainable management in the local territory. The spatial,
constructive, material characteristics and facilities are designed
obeying firmly criteria of sustainability, with technologies that
propitiate the reduction of consumption or the efficient recycling
material.

GENERAL

Program

1. Integrated citizen service: set of managed services from the Centre

to ensure and offer maximum quality and availability of the systems of
information and advice to citizens and users, including services of
information and advice to local councils and utilities,
troubleshooting, customer service, etc.

2. Service of geographic information: computer/server room and GIS

Office for diagnosis, maintenance and management of the integral water
cycle and remote control of waste.

3. Management Hall: The purpose of this room is to monitor in real

time all those parameters (data and images) that are generated in the
management and exploitation both of the integral water cycle and the
full cycle of waste, for display, control or exploitation posterior.
4. Laboratory of analysis and environmental quality and microbiology
office.

5. Administrative area.

6. Technicians offices for the management of the integral water cycle

services, monitoring of waste and advice of its environmental quality
to the villages in the region.

7. Exhibition and Conference Hall.

8. Educational Room.

9. Computers/server room, with especific features: flame retardant

ceiling, walls and floor, redundant system of power uninterrupted,
redundant system of air conditioning with high control of humidity and
temperatura, installation of false ceiling with tramr system for
facilitate the access of the wiring, controlled system of detection
and extinction of fire, controlled access by biometric code lock.

10. Parking, archive and stores.

The R&D+i Headquarters for Local Sustainability in Badajoz involves

several services:

1. Integrated citizen service: set of managed services from the Centre

to ensure and offer maximum quality and availability of the systems of
information and advice to citizens and users, including services of
information and advice to local councils and utilities,
troubleshooting, customer service, etc.

2. Service of geographic information: computer/server room and GIS

Office for diagnosis, maintenance and management of the integral water
cycle and remote control of waste.

3. Management Hall: The purpose of this room is to monitor in real

time all those parameters (data and images) that are generated in the
management and exploitation both of the integral water cycle and the
full cycle of waste, for display, control or exploitation posterior.

4. Laboratory of analysis and environmental quality and microbiology

office.

5. Administrative area.

6. Technicians offices for the management of the integral water cycle

services, monitoring of waste and advice of its environmental quality
to the villages in the region.

7. Exhibition and Conference Hall.

8. Educational Room.

9. Computers/server room, with especific features: flame retardant

ceiling, walls and floor, redundant system of power uninterrupted,
redundant system of air conditioning with high control of humidity and
temperatura, installation of false ceiling with tramr system for
facilitate the access of the wiring, controlled system of detection
and extinction of fire, controlled access by biometric code lock.

10. Parking, archive and stores.

CONCEPT

The project is designed as a topographic, urban, landscaping,

architectural device for the territory and the city. For the
territory, as information and effective control of the water
(rainwater, wastewater, water stored) in the region; for the city, as
a meeting point for awareness of natural resources but also as a
building that meets a critical point of the city, in the limit of the
historic core with the modern ensanche, the urban growth in the
sixties, in an void which always was empty. At that urban void, the
naturally generated paths made by people who occupied the district for
years, mark traces of the place in a stronger way than streets or
regulations The main decision was to keep this void and the passage
through this empty urban space, trying to condense the building in the
limits of the plot by controlling the existing constructions.

Rather than a building, weve designed an extensive garden first, a

garden which shape the interior-exterior relationship, providing in-
between spaces, concealing and protecting the construction, a place
that reconciles uses, flows and routes, both the ancient and the new
ones. Now, the building gives a flexible answer to the place and to
its scale: three pieces of different heights respond to the multiple
situations surrounding: high residential housing blocks with two
floors and a large urban facilities. Afterwards it was easy to
structure the project through the relationships between uses
(operational area, representative area, policy area) rather than
through a pristine form or dilation of the random alignment of the
plot. The three dense pieces are joined by the foyer, in clear opening
to the garden, which allowes the passage through the building without
altering its uses, as a great element to urban interface. In that
space, large format screens report the energy savings of the building
and the water facilities monitored in it, the water treatment and the
sewage plants in the region: to report is to raise awareness.

CONSTRUCTION

The principal pieces are made of black-dyed concrete textured with

local river hurdle, open to the best guidance through glass facades
screened by metal brise-soleil, which are both solar protection and
structure, the exoskeleton of the building. The lighty foyer is
extended to the outside by a pergola in the promenade access which
also covers the umbria garden. The garden is structured with native
vegetation of the region, maintenance-free. The different species of
plants have been carefully selected according to different biotopes of
the territory, placing each section of garden according to their
orientation. An artificial river purifies rainwater collected by the
roof and stored in the cistern of the patio with river plants and
algae, for later use in the system of climate conditioning and
building supply. The building is self-sufficient from an energetic
point of view. It works with radiant floor using rainwater which fed
the solar collectors, which work in winter by generating heat and in
summer generating cold by evaporation. This system is complemented by
continuous movement of natural air (free cooling) through the
courtyards and Trombe walls.