Cloud 9 won the top price at the World Architecture Festival 2011 with their Media-ICT office building for Barcelona’s new 22@ district.The Barcelona-based architecture office Cloud 9 Architects won the award World Building of the Year 2011 at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, Spain, with their Media-ICT office building.
The architects of Cloud 9 explain that they intended to convey with the Media-ICT building’s façade that the “construction is built from the top and moves downwards, becoming transparent, anti-gravitational, and almost liquid at the bottom”
The façade facing south is made of inflatable ETFE cushions that act as a variable sunscreen – opening in winter to gain solar energy, and closing in summer to protect and shade. At the southwest façade Nitrogen-based fog is introduced in these cushions to increase their opacity and thus to screen off the building’s users.
The photovoltaic roof, the use of District Cooling and smart sensors are additional features that allow optimize energy use within the Media-ICT building.
Via: detail-online.com, photos: Enric Ruiz-Geli.