Solar Tower by Ábalos+Sentkiewicz Arquitectos
07/07/2013.
[Valencia] Spain
metalocus, SERGIO CIDONCHA
metalocus, SERGIO CIDONCHA
Project Synopsis
The Solar Tower in Sociópolis, Valencia, is born out of the same initial sketch-idea as the La Chapelle Tower, in an attempt to move social housing away from the anonymous recurrent iconographies, exploring the possibilities of a tower which dematerializes at its top multiplying exterior and interior spaces with their own identity. The use of a reflective materiality and geometry with a growing curvilinear matrix, allows playing with the reflections, leading the look to the crucial point of a tall building, a model widely experimented in the American city, for which the Giralda Tower often served as a reference.
The vertical typologies, while ensuring sun exposure, decisively promote cross ventilation, an environmental strategy that in the humid and sunny weather of Valencia becomes the essential passive strategy. At the same time, the financing of social housing which is based on the appropriate use of interior square meters makes almost unviable the strategies using spaces and intermediate filters.
Linked to the understanding that the housing is rent based, where the costs of construction and especially the maintenance should be minimized, the most effective strategies and the ones that allow you to enjoy the panoramic views from the tower, are the ones that allow the reduction of heat gains through ventilated and reflective walls, intensify cross ventilation through the double orientation of the houses and tight proportioned, high thermal performance glass windows that can be opened in their full surface. The construction system, studied in detail by a physical analysis of the building, allows taking advantage of Valencia´s great periods of climatic comfort, an average of three hundred days of passive comfort in the houses. The reduction of costs due to rationalization of the facade allows the incorporation of an individual winter / summer acclimatization for extreme days (divided between calories and kilocalories to the average of fifty percent). This precise management of resources achieves an integral comfort with a minimal environmental impact and a maximum use of the physical and landscape characteristics of vertical construction. (The building has obtained the highest environmental IVE (Valencian institute of energy) profile qualification).
Definitely, the project seeks an agreement between the initial goal of providing a unique identity to the housing, and taking care of its comfort and maintenance as result of a technical and thermodynamic lecture of the location, avoiding the classical “social” configurations, whether contained or from a metaphoric environmentalism.
Text.- Iñaki Ábalos, Renata Sentkiewicz.
CREDITS.-
Main architects.- Iñaki Ábalos, Renata Sentkiewicz.
Team collaborators.- Alfonso Miguel (coordination), Laura Torres, Jorge Álvarez-Builla, Víctor Garzón, Pablo de la Hoz, Ismael Martín, Luis Matanzo, Jens Richter, David Sobrino, José Rodríguez; Antoni Ortí, José Ramón Solé - BOMA Levante, (structural engineer), Paco Mora, Jose María Barreda - ARTIN Proyectos; Enrique Llinares (quality surveyor), Grupo Secopsa (construction), Ismael Martín, Luis Matanzo, José Rodríguez (rendering), Jesús Medina (model).
Client.- IVVSA (Instituto Valenciano de Vivienda)/Grupo Valenciano del Alquiler Protegido (project). Grupo Ática/ Grupo Valenciano del Alquiler Protegido (executive project and construction).
Date.- 2008-2012.
Project.- 124 Official protection housing, commerce and parking.
Budget.- 8.200.000 €.
Surface.- 9.600 sqm (residential area), 480 sqm (comercial area), 6.200 sqm (parking area).
Site.- Plot R20. "Sector La Torre", Sociópolis. Valencia, Spain.
Ábalos+Sentkiewicz arquitectos. Iñaki Ábalos and Renata Sentkiewicz have worked together since 1999, first in Ábalos&Herreros and since 2006 in Ábalos+Sentkiewicz arquitectos. The work they develop stands out for proposing an original synthesis of technical rigor, formal imagination and discipline integration between architecture, environment and landscape, an approach they have named as “A Thermodynamic Beauty”. Their recent work has been collected in monographs as DA Architecture Doc. n.63, COAA, 2007, Abalos + Sentkiewicz arquitectos, (Thermodynamic beauty), 2G n.56 (GG, 2011) and Logroño Intermodal Station (Q estudio, 2012).
They have been awarded in many international competitions, being widely published and subject of individual (Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Cataluña, Barcelona. 2000, 2005; AA School, London. 2003; Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. 2004; Fundación ICO, Madrid, 2005; Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid. 2007; Universitá Roma Tre, Roma, 2009, Bienal de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires, 2011) and collective exhibitions (Biennale di Architettura di Venezia, Venice, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2012; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1995, 2005, 2006; Pavillon de l’arsenale, Paris, 2006; Ecological Urbanism, GSD Harvard University, 2009; Laboratorio Gran Vía, Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, 2010; Proyecto Tierra, Alhóndiga, Bilbao 2010).
Ábalos+Sentkiewicz arquitectos, with offices in Boston and Madrid, stands out the contemporary scene as one of the few international firms able to combine a deep sense of authorship (all designs are personally directed by the partners of the firm) with a systematic collaborative attitude involving in the design process from the very first steps professionals of different fields, clients and institutions, something that reflects in the success of their built work, both in the urban realm and specialized media.