Kömmerling Zero Consumption Office Building, Madrid

EnMedio Studio (David Moreno+Elena Vilches) is the author team of the winning proposal In[Between] for the international Kömmerling competition for projects with two-phase Jury intervention, for the new Kömmerling office headquarters in Camarma de Esteruelas, Madrid . With the call for this competition, this initiative wishes to position itself at the forefront of the design of Zero Consumption Buildings in Spain, anticipating European regulations where all new buildings must be almost zero consumption as of 2020. In this context A challenge is launched with a triple objective that is essential to win: it is necessary to create a new spatial quality environment for workers, materializing in a zero-consumption building of 850-1000m2 at a ‘reasonable’ cost.

To achieve these objectives, the promoter Kömmerling and ‘Zero City Project’ (ZCp) propose a work methodology that combines legal (IPD contract), management (LEAN construction) and technological (BIM methodology) tools, where the promoter actors , manager, architect and construction agents collaborate from the early design stages to optimize the project from the beginning and minimize future waste with actions that do not add value but do add time and money, due to poor management and lack of foresight.

Proposal:
InBetween proposes two functional bodies (the office space and the showroom) semi-buried and joined together that surround the reception plaza. A rear garden is generated that the workers look at and that helps them forget the industrial context in which the building is inserted.

The descent occurs through the volume of the showroom that leads towards the dining area. The different work neighborhoods are distributed in a comb separated by patios that introduce light, ventilation, and views to the outside, allowing maximum flexibility and interior organization. The informal meetings shelter the workstations and face the south garden, generating a buffer space. The support and service enclosures accompany the circulation spine, adhering to the northern retaining wall, and are isolated to protect workers from noise.

The proposal responds from the early phases of the design to a set of passive strategies that, following the precepts of PassivHaus, help to minimize active heating, cooling and artificial lighting systems. This confirms that the cleanest energy is that which is not consumed. In this way, the established triple is reached, and it is demonstrated that zero-consumption buildings can be made at a reasonable cost that offer spatial quality to the user.