Energy efficiency: implemented strategies in the new building for regional Government Offices in Merida (Spain)

The architecture office GOP was awarded the execution of the project for the regional government office building ('Consejerias") in the city of Merida, designed by Bruce S. Fairbanks, through an International Competition of Ideas summoned by the junta de Extremadura. The new Consejerias in Merida set the standards for a wholly sustainable building. It modifies its natural outdoors environment by soothing the climate and giving shelter. A design strategy was, among others, to gain as much confort as possible inside the building: thermal contort, visual confort, indoor air quality and acoustic quality. The new Consejerias underlying precept is to make a simple building, so they are designed to meet all these objectives by taking full advantage of architectonic means rather than requesting to technical fixtures for the conditioning of their indoor environment. The system designed to benefit from the inertia of the soil as a buffer for the building interior temperatures has never been used in Spain in large facilities, because they require large air volumes due to their low specific temperature. In this case, an air-to-earth heat exchanger was included in the project for a large institutional building.