High Performing Buildings – October’s Roundup
This month’s high performing buildings roundup includes state-of-the-art offices in Shanghai and a new wooden landmark building in Helsinki. Watch the...
Read Full ArticleThisWeekinFM’s high performing buildings roundup features projects in the Czech Republic, including an environmentally conscious building for a forest management company and a brewery visitor centre.
The pricing software company, Price f(x), is based in a modern office where an entire floor can be physically divided according to daily needs.
The two floors are connected by a structure composed of thousands of wooden pixels, which modulates the space around it and becomes its internal landmark. At the core of the structure is a new interior staircase and a slide. Hidden inside the wooden cells are personal lockers, dressing rooms and function rooms, while the individual fragments organically create nooks designed for informal seating and public presentations.
The entire floor can operate in conference room mode with café and dispersal areas. At the same time, the entire floor can be physically divided. Transparent walls that can be made opaque, sliding panels that divide the space, as well as the controllable atmosphere of the rooms are used for this purpose.
Picture: a photograph of an open seating area in Price f(x)'s office. Image Credit: BoysPlayNice
Kloboucká lesní, a sustainable forestry business, wanted their new HQ building to demonstrate the potential of sustainable construction – using a holistic environmental approach and cutting-edge technology.
The building design shows the way for future construction projects. Environmentally responsible, simple and modest, and placed in a natural setting surrounded with vegetation and water. The load-bearing structure is made exclusively from timber, a material that is produced on-site in the Kloboucká lesní production hall located only a hundred meters away. Glued laminated timber was used for the building frame.
The building’s PV panels produce enough energy to meet its requirements. The building has battery storage with a total capacity of 72 kW. The surplus is directed to cover the energy requirements of the company's production. In fact, the majority of all electronic equipment in the compound is using solar power at the moment. The headquarters’ solar panels also double as roofing material.
The source for heating the building and the whole area is the central boiler house, where the main fuel is wood chips of its own production, making the site completely independent of any other fuel source.
Picture: a photograph of the exterior of Kloboucká lesní's HQ building. Image Credit: BoysPlayNice
On the 30th anniversary of the Bernard Family Brewery, the company opened its brand new visitor centre, featuring black cement screed and copper design elements.
The interior is inspired by the industrial character of the brewery, with its typical mullion windows and shopfronts. Walls made of beer bottles set in metal frames serve as a partition between different spaces and the light passing through the bottle glass creates a magical shadow play and colours the interior with a honey shade of beer.
Picture: a photograph of the interior at the Bernard Family Brewery's visitor centre, showing how light comes through a wall made of beer bottles. Image Credit: BoysPlayNice
The brewer's hall on the next floor is designed to be as multifunctional as possible. The space can be divided into two or three parts using mobile wooden partitions. The hall is dominated by a square bar, which is defined by columns and framed again by a transparent decoration made of beer bottles. Through the bar one can peer into a refrigerated warehouse with copper tanks filled with Bernard beer. A warm beige screed is applied to the walls. The shape of the ceiling refers to the history of the building – the wooden arches copy the vaults from the second floor, thus continuing the character of the old coolships.
The beerhouse space, occupying the entire fourth floor, is dominated by a bar with suspended copper beer tanks. The atmosphere of the beerhouse is calmer than in the previous areas, supported with the choice of materials. Black cement screed and dark curtains are used on the walls and Bernard beer bottles act as partitions. The refurbished furniture is part of an overall concept of "Old meets New", where new meets history.
Main Picture: a photograph of the wooden structure at the centre of Price f(x)'s office. Image Credit: BoysPlayNice
Text credits:
Price f(x) Offices text credit: Krištof Hanzlík, Šimon Kos, Adam Kössler, Libor Mládek and Mark Kelly via Linka
Bernard Visitor Center text credit: Barbara Bencova via Linka
Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 29 March 2023
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