HOMES Executive Center

Homes head offices are established on the outskirts of an industrial area at the foot of the Pieve di Soligo hills, which are about fifty kilometres from Venice. The complex accommodates the executive, sales, technical and administrative parts of five companies in the furniture industry. The client asked for a functional building that could express a strong group identity.
The project features two non-perpendicular intersecting parallelepipeds. Planimetric distribution is based on the ideas underlying Feng-shui. The building is orientated on an east-west axis in order to fully exploit the solar cycle. The two underground floors accommodate the car park and a showroom of over 2000 square metres. On the floors above ground, the transverse building is dedicated to reception and restrooms; the longitudinal building hosts the company nursery, canteen, offices and conference hall. The layout of the offices is flexible and easily adaptable to future needs due to the use of a floating floor and mobile partition walls. The cantilever first floor creates a covered area to serve the nursery and canteen. The building uses the best heat-sound insulation techniques, providing workers with a quality environment and quality services (canteen, company nursery). The longitudinal building is defined by a continuous structural façade; the double-skin curtain wall of the transversal body, with low-emission extra-light glass windows, is of the semi-active type that affords high energy savings; it is regulated by air extractors and curtains to ensure excellent wellbeing (greenhouse effect in winter – chimney effect in summer).
CREATIVE THOUGHTS AND FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTIONS:
The lighting project was developed with Philips, that collaborated technically to highlight the singularity of the architecture and supplies the work environment with scrupulous quality. Special care has been taken to exploit natural and artificial light; in the offices dynamic lighting varies automatically throughout the day, changing luminosity on the basis of increases or decreases in Kelvin degrees. The two light wells and wide windows ensure natural light in the central part of the building; in the underground section illumination is provided by a large light well and broadly banked terrain facing the road that descends to the showroom.
The heating system uses the residue from machining carried out by the companies in the group; tele-heating is combined with condensation boilers. Cross-flow air treatment machines facilitate energy recovery and come with motors regulated by means of inverters (30% electricity saving). The two water coolers have desuperheaters for condensation temperature recovery to dehumidify the rooms. Solar panels provide hot water. Air is let into the rooms through the floor along the façades, with inlets in the counter ceilings.
The false ceilings in micro-perforated sheet metal on a soundproofing pad guarantee good soundproofing in the work environment, and the common areas are clad in Top Acustic.
The indoor areas are characterized by light colours. The restrooms, very elegant, have surfaces and sides in wood and Corian.
The showroom should make the core of the group understood, and through a high and dark shell highlight the quality and capture the imagination of visitors of the high development project towards which the five companies are launched.

• Area: 14.000 m2
• Number of workstations: 150 employees
• Company areas:
- Offices: Directional, commercial, technical and administrative
- Other services: Dining hall (100 seats) | Nursery (28 children) | Conference Hall (200 people) | Showroom (over 2000 sq.m.) | Underground parking (80 spaces) | outdoor parking (120 spaces)
• Construction: 2007-2009

• Architect: Mario Mazzer
• Project architects: arch. Marco Da Ros - arch. Stefania Neodo

HOMES Executive Center by Mario Mazzer in Italy won the WA Award Cycle 9. Please find below the WA Award poster for this project.