Plaza Ecópolis | Ecosistemaurbano

Transformation of a faceless site in Madrid's urban sprawl, surrounded by industry and heavy traffic transportation infrastructures, into a public space for social interaction providing a building for childcare. The project “Plaza Ecopolis” aims to incorporate the idea of sustainability into daily life, reducting the energy consumption by matters of design, but also raising people's awareness of their own consumption behaviour. It is Ecosistema Urbano's belief that projects as “Plaza Ecopolis” are a way to impart awareness for sustainability to children who in consequence will become responsible adults. The implemented technologies help to minimize the consumption of both energy and natural resources. A complete energy simulation developed by the Engineering School of Seville is the key to understand the behaviour of the building and to adjust the available construction budget. The Ecopolis Plaza project has the highest eco-label (A grade) of Spanish law. An important area of the building (50%) half-buried which takes advantage of the land's thermal inertia, and a large glass facade facing south, are basic decisions that shape the physical relationship between the building and its environment. A bioclimatic textile layer superimposed over a light steel structure (partially movable, connected with sensors to sun position) is the interface between interior and exterior spaces, blurring the boundaries between private and public and extending the inner comfort to the public space. The building extends its limits into the plaza and become more transparent to the public. The sewage system, bassed on a natural process, ends into a lagoon where all the waste water from the building is naturally purified by macrophyte plants. The purified water is stored under the ground within a gravel tank and it is used for all the irrigation needs of the plaza, this artificial landscape emulates a natural riverbank. All this is surrounded by an artificial topography created as an enclosure and protection filter from the aggressive industrial environment. Ecopolis Plaza applies the economy of means to the field of sustainable construction, where efficiency usually means higher construction cost. The project cost per square meter is more than 35% less than a conventional building.