This is a 3D model of the building, seen from the north west. As you can see, the northern part has a lower roof, while the south’s roof is higher and rather steep. It of course holds the PV panels but also captures day- and sunlight.
In order to avoid to much upheating, the south façade has an overhang that avoid too much irradiation from the high summer sun, while lower winter sun is still admitted.
As you can see from section the high sun in summer hardly reaches the interior. And in winter the sun is lower, much lower than this actually, and then reaches the interior for the desired passive solar heat. The admittance of daylight in winter is further promoted by a pond in front of the south façade.
daylight in summer time
daylight in winter time
The internal zoning is simple: a greenhouse to the south and other spaces to the north, such as the offices, pantry and toilets
You can see this clearly in the floor plan of Proyecto Roble. We have mainly looked at the elongated part of the building. The block on the right is an existing building that was included in the construction plans.
As you can see, the greenhouse in the middle is the big connector of all spaces. So the greenhouse is rather important, not just as an architectural element, built from sustainable materials, yet also for the climatisation of the building. It brings in light, heat and air.
High windows to the north bring in a lot of daylight, but they can also be opened for ventilation, amongst others to discharge hot air in summer.
The west façade has vertical rods, which will keep out irradiation from the south, but admit the lower western sun. On the northern elevation we see a relatively transparent façade to admit a lot of daylight that does not heat up the building. The glass panels are of course well insulating.
As you can see, this part of the building also has a view on a beautiful green garden.
As we can see from cross-section below the most eye-catching feature perhaps is the water-purifying green roof, a world innovation. Here we see it with a robot mower. the water purified by this roof is used for toilet flushing.
Now, a more complicated story concerns the building services, which we can find in the technical plant room. Here you see a bunch of them, with the air treatment chambers with heat recovery wheel to the left. The heat pump system for the underfloor heating can be seen from the black pipes, and the boxes to the right are the heat pumps.
Here you see the exterior part of the heat pumps: the condensors, which extract heat from the air in winter – and possibly discharge heat from the building in summer.
So they are air-source heat pumps. Technically these are less efficient that water- or ground source heat pumps, since the sources if these are more stable in temperature. In inner-city situations, heat pumps used for cooling – just as with air-conditioners – could have a negative effect of heating up the air in the city, but this would not be a problem here.
Because of the lower efficiency in cold winter, this office has extra heating power in winter. In winter time, a hearth provides extra heat for the underfloor heating system. It is efficiently burning wood logs, waste material from cuttings.
