ARQUITECTURA, INGENIERÍA Y CONSTRUCCIÓN: Agencia Andaluza / Ruiz Larrea y Asociados

© Jesús Granada
Architects: Ruiz Larrea y Asociados
Location: Sevilla, Spain
Architect In Charge: Cesar Ruiz-Larrea Cangas, Antonio Gómez Gutiérrez
Area: 11,187.32 sqm
Year: 2013
Photographs: Jesús Granada
Collaborators: Eduardo A. Prieto González, Hernán Bugueño Rubio, Elena Pascual Montes, Macario Iglesias Carbonell, Gorka Álvarez Ugalde, Enrique Gª de la Rasilla Pedruelo, Inmaculada Morgado Baca, Miguel Díaz Martín-Herradón, David Palomar Aguilar, Jaime Llosa Palomares, Francisco Rica Marina, Susana Calvo Pascual

From the architect. The building is the result of a PROCESS that, paying attention to energy and spacial criteria, allowing to achieve an architectural result free from any formal priority. In this sense, the fundamental standards that fed the process had been:

1. Exhaust the edificability, thereby the original geometry of the project can be understood as the maximum capable volume, whose voids and subtractions respond to functional and energy requirements.

2. Design whit special attention the interior spaces of the building, attending to lighting, thermal and acoustic comfort of its users.

3. Reinterpret the forms of traditional Andalusi architecture, understanding them as passive systems of great efficiency, supplemented by active low consumption energy systems.

4. Obtain an energy behavior with lower demands, also using the preexistent infrastructures (water network to dissipate the heat), and capable of being double sided used through the year, taking into account the extreme conditions in summer, but studying with detail its behavior in winter and midseason climate.

5. Design a industrialized and energy active skin system: a bio-perfectible skin that would be developed for the building as a first example of its application.

The Pattern. By the use of a pattern the energy solicitations of the close environment are geometrically translated from the geometry of the lot, the structural efficiency and the relationship whit sun lighting and dominant winds, originating a mesh that allows to shape spatially the building. Therefore, the configuration of the pattern can be understood as the superposition of three layers: urban and structural layer, attraction of fresh wind direction and the best solar orientation.

Applied over the maximum capable volume of the building -a parallelepiped with optimal form-factor coefficient- this mesh creates an ENERGY SPATIAL PATTERN capable of solving in its framework the skin of the building, as well as its interior spaces. The Skin. The envelope of the building, regulator system as well as controller of the interior environment, is constitute by a skin two layers with an air chamber. The external layer constitute a protective or permeable finish to the building, according to the different moments of the year. This skin is self regulated by the air chamber, which remains open or close according to the exterior climate conditions.

Skylight. The mocarable skylight, following invariants of Andalusian tradition, is an architectural feature designed as well to allow as much light to enter the building with natural overhead optimally depending on the season cycle, as the evacuation of stale air from inside the building. The skylight allows: recruitment of light during the winter through the south facing slope, radiation protection during summer time and diffuse light capture (the mocarabe as a reflection) and radiation avoidance in south and south-east orientation. Its constructed with reflective materials such as white plaster and aluminum, as well as other with high thermal inertia. The camera inside the skylight is used as a thermal mattress for the interior of the building.

Lightwell. The lightwell is a lighting system composed by pipes capable of transfer in an efficient way natural light from an upper focal point to various inferior spaces. Agains other similar systems, known and availables in the market (solar tubes), the lightwellcolimates the light beam in an efficient way, delivering it keeping adecuate lighting levels not only vertically, but also horizontally. The vertical pipe, by which surface the light is transmited, it’s not, as in conventional systems, opaque, but completely translucid., putting together the undoubtable advantages of the system in the energy consumption field with a new image. The lightwells can become into adequate elements in order to create lighting atmospheres inside a building, occupying less useable space than traditional lighting patios and, at the same time, allowing a strict control of the illumination levels.

Biopix Façade. The Biopix façade is a flexible system which allows to configure different kinds of building envelopes, integrating both traditional cladding elements as other more sophisticated systems like photovoltaic panels, LED displays, etc…