Carlos Arroyo Architects – OostCampus. City Hall and Civic Center in Oostkamp, Belgium

PROJECT: Carlos Arroyo Architects – OostCampus. City Hall and Civic Center in Oostkamp, Belgium

LOCATION: Oostkamp, Belgium

YEAR: 2012

ARCHITECT / FIRM: Carlos Arroyo Architects

BUYER: Autonoom Gemeetebedrijf Oostkamp

SURFACE: 11.000 sqm

PRICE: € 6.500.000

DESCRIPTION:
In a move towards Upcycling, keeping and transforming the vast industrial hall - with minimal footprint but maximum spatial result - Arroyo designed a sheltered interior public space, wrapped in a “luminous landscape of white clouds". Thin shells of GRG (gypsum and fibre) span the large space like huge soap bubbles. They are only 7 mm thick. Within this interior landscape, a set of modular clusters provides the administrative services and spaces, designed to facilitate the relationship between citizens and administration and to provide transparency. The Chamber Hall is in full sight in the middle of public space, the information is accessible, and you can even visualize the municipal website ...and physically enter it and talk to the person who is behind! The price per square meter building is one-third of the usual for buildings of comparable function, as a result of the radical reuse of the existing.

DESCRIPTION:
The city of Oostkamp acquired the former Coca-Cola factory, a 40.000 m2 plot with an 11.000 m2 industrial shed built in 1991. The competition brief required a campus that could gather most of the public service buildings of the city on this central and well-connected plot. We decided to keep and reuse the spacious industrial shed; not just to recycle materials like the steel, but to reuse the space itself, and all the functioning "invisible" systems.

DESCRIPTION:
The city of Oostkamp acquired the former Coca-Cola factory, a 40.000 m2 plot with an 11.000 m2 industrial shed built in 1991.

- SURFACE present REDUCTION,

PREVALENT CONSERVATION / CONTINUITY: The overall dimensions decrease moderately with respect to the pre-existing surface.

- VOLUME present REDUCTION,

PREVALENT CONSERVATION / CONTINUITY: The overall dimensions decrease moderately with respect to the pre-existing volume.

DESCRIPTION:
Respect for the grey energy in the existing construction is a major criterion for sustainable development. Replacing a building (which in this case would affect even sewerage or sidewalks) always implies a major carbon debt that may well take over 100 years for the most efficient new construction to pay back. Reusing the existing building was the way to cover the whole programme with the limited budget available. Our proposal is cheaper to implement and cheaper to maintain than the competition alternatives. We reuse the building, while proposing a far-reaching transformation of the interior, to turn it into a luminous landscape of clouds; a sheltered public space within a controlled weather environment, where simple adaptable modular clusters may be arranged.

DESCRIPTION:
The large space created within the white cloud landscape becomes a kind of Grand Place with permanent mild weather. The clusters of city services are arranged according to a topogram, a graphic depiction of the work-flow in relation to space, developed through workshops with the city employees and the citizens.

DESCRIPTION:
The starting point for the project is an uncompromising in-situ reciclage of the existing industrial building, including foundations, bearing structure, outer skin, waterproofing, services installations and equipment, electric power station, heating plant, water ducts, fire hoses, drainage and even parking space, fencing and accesses. This approach may be defined as upcycling.

DESCRIPTION:
The thin and light white bubbles are self-supporting GRG (gypsum with glass-mat reinforcement) shells, 7-8 millimetres thin, weighing only 7 kg/m2. The openings among the clouds are equipped with simple devices that transform all kinds of weather conditions into wonderful events. The strong winds of the outside are transformed into electricity that feeds a disc of LEDs, an artificial sun that will bring joy to, for instance, wedding days.

DESCRIPTION:
Joyful recycling: While addressing the issue of embedded energy, we propose a fun way to do things. This has been defined by critics as Sustainable Exuberance, and praised as a key for the success of sustainable approaches.