4 Seasons - Isover central office building

The project is a concept for ISOVER central office in Bulgaria - country that has it is own climate characteristics – four different seasons. The site for Isover’s office building is located on a former gypsy ghetto. It’s near the centre of the capital Sofia, with a park on the south and with a boulevard on the east. The project configurates the signs of the gypsys’s houses as water mirrors with the same contour and continues the park northwards,connecting the green areas.The project is inspired from both cultural and natural characteristics of the site. The vitality and the human scale of the gypsys; the thermal water- typical for the city since antiquity and the park are interpreted. Morphology : the task for Isover’s central office and the use of geometrical simple volumes for passive house led me to the use of cube.The cube is rotated in all three directions on 12 degrees – an angle which is set in the city planning of the city since antiquity. Isover’s main purpose is to insulate, to cover and my building has the same function. The workspaces are enveloped by a green vegetative skin, which is covered with a glass cube. There’s an air mass between the two cubes, working as an intermediate zone.The green cube contains 3 floors – the first consist the public space. On the second and the third floors are the workspaces. The human scale of the gypsys is interpreted in the small work groups of 4 to 6 people. There’s a garden on the roof. The research led me to the following shape – a segmented building with different view each season, covered by a glass skin. The volume that looks solid from outside, should be transparent through the windows from inside.The most interesting part comes at last. Besides all the standart passive house systems, the building offers an alternative way of heating and cooling. During the cold days or nights the double skin of the glass cube will be filled with hot thermal water for cooling and opposite – in summer it will be filled with cool rainwater, stored in the water mirrors.