Student Residence and UPC Offices
credits
Site: Passeig dels Til•lers. Barcelona
Client: RESA and UPC
Year of project: 2007
Building: 2011
Area: 3.423m2
location
description
The RESA student’s residence was built in 2001 as a composition of three separated wings, reducing thus the scale of the elements that were to be inserted in the beautiful garden of the Rectorate of the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. The program offered three different kinds of student’s rooms plus collective services, which are directly related to the garden and the private patio. The rooms look out on the trees and through the natural ventilation together with the ventilated facade, a great reduction in energy demand for cliamtization was being secured.
More complex was how to guarantee the interior comfort in the offices of the second phase (2009), where internal heat gains during daytime are abundant. A radical orientation to the north-south axis and a completely opaque south facade were the first answer. All workspaces would be able to enjoy all around exterior vision, completely open to the north buit protected to the east and the west. The exterior blinds that were used for this re-established the aesthetic relation with the students residence. Natural light and (once again) natural ventilation are the keys to comfort in this green oasis in the big city.
The energy use of the offices is being monitored in the through the Sirena System of the UPC, which has helped to reduce energy consumption during the first three years with 27%.
