With this building it is shown that light buildings can be as energy efficient, or even less energy consuming than the traditional, heavy buildings. The building consists of a steel construction, light concrete floors, glass façades and steel sandwich panels, but nevertheless uses a minimum of heating- and cooling installations.
 The perforated steel screen |
 The cavity between the building and the screen |
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The three stories high building, in which new medicines are tested on
people, consists of offices, laboratories and patient accommodation. The
building is divided into three zones: two zones with accommodation space
along the façades (offices and laboratories on the first and second
level, patient accommodations on the third level) and a central zone with
a vide, stairwells, elevators and provisions. The façades of the
accommodation spaces entirely consists of glass sliding fronts. By opening
these sliding fronts and by opening a door to the middle zone the user
can regulate the cross ventilation of his room. Rising warm air in the
central vide is released in the roof and in this way starts the much needed
ventilation.
To make the glass facades and the natural ventilation possible a perforated
steel screen is placed at a distance of two metres. This screen integrates
a number of different functions:
-Sun screen: the screen is 50% perforated and lets enough natural light
pass while the sun heat is almost entirely blocked out. The perforation
is chosen so that the screen is almost completely transparent from the
inside.
-Wind wall: in the space between screen and façade a cool space
is created in the summer which allows opening the sliding doors, and with
that ventilation, also at high wind speeds. In the winter it prevents
strong cooling of the facades by the cold wind.
-Privacy screen: from inside to outside the screen is almost transparent,
from outside however it manifests itself as almost untransparent: a veil.
-In architectonic perspective the screen insulates the building from its
anonymous surroundings that consists of a heterogeneous collection of
industrial buildings and works as a tradition garden wall around a closed
private inner space.
Because of those measures heating can be restricted to small heating units in every room (a large part of the heating is created by surplus heat of lighting, computers and so forth). Extra cooling appeared to be only required in the laboratories.
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