海角视频

CUPULA SOLAR – Joint Research Centre

Seville, Spain

The new Joint Research Centre in Seville, which has been named CUPULA SOLAR, delivers on the European Commission鈥檚 commitment to sustainability. Uniting the European vision of the New Bauhaus initiative 鈥� a creative and interdisciplinary initiative that connects the European Green Deal to new European living and working spaces 鈥� and establishing a new benchmark for workspace that empowers knowledge sharing, collaboration and co-creation.

The centre will be the headquarters of the European Commission鈥檚 international team of 405 scientific researchers and support staff. The building will house 12 research units and supporting functions as well as public and private outdoor spaces.

The new Joint Research Centre in Seville will be the headquarters of the European Commission鈥檚 international team of 400 scientific researchers and support staff.

海角视频 was engaged to deliver expert consultancy for concept design around structural engineering, sustainability, building services engineering (MEP), acoustics and facades engineering.

We worked closely with lead architect BIG 鈥� Bjarke Ingels Group, to inform a highly sustainable, efficient and comfortable working environment.

The site will be covered with a solar PV canopy, generating more electricity than the building uses while shading the building, limiting solar gain and hence energy consumption.

Challenge

海角视频 was engaged to deliver expert consultancy for concept design around structural engineering, sustainability, building services engineering (MEP), acoustics and facades engineering. We worked closely with lead architect BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group to design a highly sustainable, efficient and comfortable working environment.

With its location on the former EXPO麓92 site, the building will be directly connected to the Jardin Americano riverfront and the Torre Sevilla market, extending the city鈥檚 promenade to create a new town square.

Inspired by the shaded plazas and streets of the city, the site will be covered with a cloud of solar canopies consisting of photovoltaic sheets, sheltering the plaza, garden, and research centre from the southern Spanish sun while mitigating the energy consumption of the new building.

The aspirations for the 9,900m虏 building tie into Seville鈥檚 own goal to become a benchmark for sustainability by 2025 and the local vision of the eCity Sevilla project to decarbonise and transition the Isla de la Cartuja district to 100% renewable energy sources.

The architect鈥檚 vision was for the solar array to sit across a series of columns formed to be slender enough to mitigate against an appearance of clutter. A key structural challenge was designing the canopy to work for wind and earthquake loads without needing any bracing. This required careful analysis of the movements of the canopy under wind and seismic loading, and understanding how this flexible structure will interact with the stiff concrete building it is attached to.

Solution

Informed by the heritage of shaded plazas and streets around the city, the canopy will cover the entire project site with a 鈥渃loud鈥� of solar panels. These will shelter and shade the plaza, garden, and research building beneath, but will consist of square, light-weight photovoltaic panels, supported by elegantly slender columns.

The design covers the entire site with this array of 9mx9m square panels, which will dramatically reduce the operational carbon footprint of the building. The development is predicted to be energy positive across the year, feeding excess energy back into the grid. The canopy will provide 11,300m虏 of shade, lowering the mechanical cooling requirements of the building, while also acting as a mount for the 9,030m虏 of PV panels. The energy generated will off-set the embodied carbon after 25 years, after which point the building will become genuinely regenerative in terms of its overall carbon footprint.

Seismic considerations had to be brought into the design for the canopy to ensure its resilience in the event of an earthquake. We modelled a range of scenarios to ensure the desired effect was achieved 鈥� allowing the canopy structure to sway in an earthquake to defuse the impact of the movement and transfer forces away from the building. We also conducted advanced analysis on the capacity of the slender columns, to prove that the architectural vision could be achieved without the columns buckling.

Our structural engineers played a key role in helping to develop the most efficient grid structure for the columns 鈥� with panels sharing columns at intersections, reducing the number of columns required. Drainage and structural connections are both incorporated within the columns to maintain the clean lines and neat aesthetics.

We helped to inform a modular approach to building the canopy, enabling the most efficient offsite development and rapid construction methodologies. Our team developed a construction sequence to ensure the most efficient and safest process of construction. This took into account retaining the stability of the canopy structure as it is built, but also key practical elements, such as the siting of the cranes, and the maximum transportable size of prefabricated elements. We also coordinated the new foundations with existing foundation structures across the site to avoid clashes.

The elegance of projects like this is all in the details. Our facade engineers developed an access strategy maintenance and cleaning of the solar panels, using folding ladders which will not clutter the appearance; while our acoustics experts delivered studies on the impact the canopy will have on the acoustics across the site.

We also looked at how the site might develop in future years. The design is conceived to be highly flexible, to allow the working spaces to evolve and potentially be expanded as requirements evolve in the coming years. Our concept designs included options to future-proof the building for future expansion by providing appropriate foundations now.

The design prioritises locally-soured materials, such as limestone, wood and ceramic tiling. The structural design specifies the use of concrete with cement replacement, which is not currently widely done in the region, reducing up to 30% of typical embodied carbon.

The passive design of the building, through its shallow floorplate and constant shading under the solar panels, enable natural cross ventilation and ideal light qualities, reducing energy consumption typically used on artificial lighting, air conditioning and mechanical ventilation. Our sustainability team developed a series of studies to support the analysis and visualisation of how solar gain would impact the building at different times of the day and year.

Outdoor gardens, including planting from the region and water elements, minimise the heat island effect and ensure a comfortable microclimate across the site. The floorplate of the building steps back as the building ascends, creating a series of terraces 鈥� shaded outdoor spaces for breakouts, relaxation and informal meetings with views across the city.

Value

Our engineers played a key role in the development of a highly sustainable and comfortable workspace for the European Commission鈥檚 community of scientific researchers and support staff, establishing a benchmark for collaborative and flexible workspaces that empower co-creation.

We delivered broad multidisciplinary technical insight, but also supported the stakeholder engagement, particularly in terms of ensuring the client teams were fully informed on the technical aspirations for the site.