Delivery process
Ecopolis Plaza is a kindergarten located in the metropolitan area of Madrid called Rivas Vaciamadrid, Spain. This area is a low urban population density zone, which yet required to be implemented with school facilities, leisure and cultural services. The project is the result of a local public government initiative to embrace sustainability development strategies. Susch approach was established in 2010 when the City Council of Rivas Vaciamadrid adopted the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP). Such plan was connected to the Rivas Zero Emissions Plan (R0EP), which was a city’s strategic approach aimed at reducing 50% of the GHG emissions by 2020, and at achieving the carbon neutrality by 2030.
Moreover, the financing was provided by the government thanks to The Spanish Plan for the Stimulation of the Economy and Employment (PLAN E), which provided 2.887.931,03 euro for the project delivery. The final cost was 2.700.000 euro, which represented a 6.5% saving on the initial cost. In 2009 the Local Energy Agency of Rivas Vaciamdrid launched a design competition for the design and delivery of the kindergarten and the related urbanization of the plot 4-1 of the OSR ED-07. The competition was won by the architectural firm Ecosistema Urbano. This firms is based in Madrid, Spain and they are specialized in urbanism architecture, engineering and sociology. The winning scheme aimed at creating a vision of urban sustainability to reduce energy consumption and to raise the awareness of the users towards their responsibilities in using energy resources.
The layout of the building create a public space, as well as the teaching spaces are conceived as ‘open environmental classroom’ in order to integrate knowledge about the environment into the teaching program. During the design phase, the Ecosistema Urbano firm carried out a number of participation activities, which spanned from regular meeting with the City Council’s staff, informative meetings with the public, and training meeting with the future users to discuss the correct use of the building. Moreover, Ecosistema Urbano drafted a booklet to explain the correct building management, as well as established a tw-year monitoring activity to conduct comparative analysis of the energy consumption between the kindergarten and other projects of similar surface and scope. The building was developed by relying on traditional procurement method, and a public bid assigned the construction to H.M s.a, which collaborated with a number of subcontractors and suppliers such as Emetal s.a., Arcelor Mittal, Bat Spain Textile, AICIA Climatic Control, Targhetti Poulsen, and Sicesal Window System.
Most of these companies and supplier were local, whereas other were located in Germany. The building management is run by an ad-hoc company named Rayuela-Luna s.a.. The project achieved the eco-label called ‘Grade A’ within the Spanish scheme for energy regulation. Moreover, the project Ecopolis Plaza received a number of award, among which the Best Practice Award by the United Nations Habitat Program. The results reported on this project are many: the transformation of an ex-industrial land into public space; definition of a public space and kindergarten aimed at raising awareness on environmental sustainability, optimisation of financial and technical resources in the design
scheme, introduction of a water strategy that reduce heavily its consumption, social inclusion, and determination of gathering space in which is possible to explore the relation between sustainability and daily life. The project is aimed at being a benchmark for the development of future sustainable projects in Spain.
Innovation types and impacts
The Ecopolis Plaza project shows radical innovation, system innovation, and to certain extent architectural innovation. Radical innovation is found in the water treatment of the project that is aimed at recycling water and at the same time to display the role of wise usage of the natural resources. This is achieved by the lagoon feature in the public square. Even if this system might not be radical innovation in other context, for the Spanish area is a new approach that join together technical environmental approach to social inclusion through visually displaying the sustainable feature of the re-use of grey water. The environmental control system, as well as the construction system and the structure can be considered system innovation, as they all contribute to augment the performance of the building in terms of environmental sustainability. The orientation, the shape and the dimensions fall into the category of architectural innovation, as well as the context characterises and the concept.
Table 16: The table shows the innovation type in the Ecopolis Plaza. Radical innovation is found in the water treatment that is used as architectural feature to deliver an inclusive project for the community. The strong environmental aim of the project is actualised in the system innovation that can be found both in the architectural characteristics, and in the environmental control systems.
Incremental Modular Architectural System Radical Context Characteristics activities to deliver and use the building.
The actors involved in the project had to undertake competence creating activities, doing problem solving based on their existing knowledge.
Competence destroying activities were undertaken by the users and the building managers, who both needed to do specific training to learn the appropriate way to utilise the building, by understanding their role and responsibilities in using efficiently environmental resources.
Actor Competence
Sustainability results
The building was designed to achieve environmental and social results within limited budget. The awards received by the project – such as the nomination for the architects to the Mies Van Der Rhoe Proze for Emerging Architects, the Silver Award Europe by the Holcim Foundation for sustainable construction, the Next Generation Award from the Arquipa Proxima Foundation – confirmed the importance of the environmental and social results achieved by the project. As previously mentioned, the local community has achieved a public square, and a sustainable teaching environment for the kids. The process, in particular the construction process, contributed to the achievement of cost saving in comparison to the initial budget. The use of mostly local materials and local suppliers helped reduce the impact of logistic, and the participated process in the design phase contributed to achieve social results also during the delivery process. The greatest achievement, according to Vallejo (2011) was to deliver a sustainable building that rather than ‘renouncing to anything’ as design approach, could instead
‘….educate the next generation in better practices; usually buildings hide lots of things related to their function and their use of resources. We are trying to make these issues more transparent to the kids and their families’. The building therefore, through its environmental design achieved the social result to communicate the value of sustainable behavior to its users and to the community.
Figure 20: The figures above show the results both in building and process. The building features show a predominance in social and environmental results, while the process is characterised also by a significant economic component, which is demonstrated by the cost saving occurred during the construction phase.
The actors and the eco-innovation and sustainability model
The project delivery process was carried out with the collaboration of public institution, client, designer, builder, industry and client. Despite the traditional procurement method would normally allocate responsibilities to the client, the designer and the builder, in this instance the responsibilities were spread among all the others actors involved in the project.
In particular, the eco-ideation phase was characterized by the public institution and the client, which was as well the public entity of the City Council of Rivas Vaciamadrid acted as leaders, champions and entrepreneur by
Building Process
ENVIRONMENTAL
SOCIAL
ECONOMIC
establishing a number of plans to promote environmental projects, and in this instance to launch the competition for the kindergarten in Vaciamadrid.
The eco-innovation phase was characterised by the role of the designer, which through the design and the project organization could collaborate with the builder, the industry and the users. These actors collaborated on the project as common purpose, and at the same time obtaining individual profit.
This project involvement had an impact on the eco-institutionalization phase by producing market and society benefits, and well as knowledge and technology generation. The role of public institution, client and users contributed to the development of market and society benefits; whereas the designers, by following the plans and the requirements defined by the public institution and the client, achieved knowledge and technological development. Moreover, through the design decisions made by the designers the environmental decisions were also turned into a social impact by defining a communication strategy of their value that could reach users and society and therefore raise the awareness about the environment and the optimal behaviour in terms of resources use.
Figure 21: The image above shows the eco-innovation and sustainable model for the Ecolpolis Plaza project. The public institution and the client played an important role in fostering sustainability initiatives, and the designers and users played a significant role in determining an impact on the market and society, and to certain extent also to the knowledge and technological development. The builder and the industry took part on the project collaborating and at the same time obtaining individual profit.