Future vision
Brückner Architekten proposes an office that creates more energy than it consumes
This office concept by Brückner Architekten combines tectonic forms with ultra-high environmental performance. Intended to occupy a prominent corner plot, it straddles its site with a lattice-like composition of stacked and interlocking forms.
The Munich-based architecture studio has explored the ways in which technology can reshape an office’s environmental footprint. ‘The office districts of the future will have to meet completely different requirements in terms of sustainability and quality of space than is customary today,’ the architects say. ‘As a result, our projects and developments must go far beyond the legal requirements. The days of heating a building with fossil fuels and cooling with electricity are gone.’
Central to Brückner’s ethos is creating buildings that produce more energy than they consume. This concept illustrates the myriad ways in which energy can be generated, conserved and redirected. The key technologies on offer – in addition to using renewable sources – are photovoltaic panels, geothermal energy, hydropower and channelling waste heat from data centres. ‘These approaches should be a matter of course for a modern office,’ the architects say. ‘We want companies and their employees to feel that, over the course of their working life, they can reduce or even completely eliminate their lifetime carbon footprint.’
An office offers unseen opportunities, from waste heat from computers, to geothermal energy from heat pumps, to efficient storage and management systems that direct energy where it is needed most for heating and cooling. Rooftops will combine photovoltaic cells and green spaces. As this dynamic design so ably demonstrates, the art of energy management and bold, creative architecture can go hand in hand.