The
Zabalgana civic centre is located in the Zabalgana neighbourhood, in the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country. Starting the last quarter of 2017, it will serve
22,347 community members from both neighbourhood and the rest of the city.
The building, located on a plot of
more than 15,000 m2 and with
11,472.81 m2 of built area, was executed by
Ferrovial Agroman as a joint venture with Obras Públicas Onaindia for the City of Vittoria.
The civic centre for community members
The uniqueness of the building lies in the
distribution and
curved shape adaptation of the volumes in a non-standard land plot and in the use of concrete seen in most of the enclosures from the entire construction. The building itself, with its landscaped walkable roofs, links through a pedestrian path between two areas of the neighbourhood in an East-West direction for which the highest buildings (sports centre) are partially buried in such a way that the height of the construction is kept low.
The centre is distributed in
several volumes at one, two, or three height levels. The
basement plants, with 1,032.13 m2, hold warehouses, changing rooms, document storage areas, and facility rooms. The 8,665.69 m2 of the ground floor include the
main hall,
meeting room,
cafeteria,
restrooms, family oriented
library,
youth club,
info-centre, film and digital
photography laboratories,
playroom,
meeting room,
conference rooms,
exhibition and conference area,
recreational swimming pools,
changing rooms,
sports court,
community member service office and assembly hall. The 1,775.99 m2 ground floor will have an adult and media library, study room, dance, expression and theatre workshop, restrooms,
two gyms, changing rooms and exercise rooms.
It is a very broad building in all its spaces that has a
large public square in front of the main entrance and landscaped areas around it. In addition, much of the space inside will be illuminated with
natural light through what are known as
English courtyards, open outdoor spaces distributed in different areas of the building that facilitate the entrance of light in different directions.
This highlights the
uniqueness of the building's structure, whose main element are the exposed concrete walls since in many cases they are curved and high, shaping the external enclosure. Almost 7,000 m2 of concrete walls have therefore been executed. There are also 3,300 m2 of zinc enclosures in roofs and façades, 1,700 m2 of landscaped roof, 2,800 m2 of continuous magnesite flooring and 3,000 m2 of wood floors and over 6,000 m2 of vertical and horizontal claddings with different types of wood panels.
Also noteworthy are the facilities with which the building is equipped and especially the innovative solution that has been executed, proposed by the JV for the production of DHW. This has consisted in replacing the generator equipment planned with an alternative solution not provided for in the CTE, consisting of the installation of a
heat pump with thermal recovery of the humid air extracted from the air conditioner, which incorporates heat recovery, plus recovery of heat from renewed water from the tanks of the two pools. The proposal has been developed and submitted to the corresponding Industry Branch for validation as an alternative solution and has resulted in a significant improvement in CO2 emissions and primary energy consumption compared to the figures forecast in the original project plan. This has resulted in 5,937 kWh/year savings in electricity consumption, 513,864 kWh/year of gas consumption and a reduction in CO2 emissions of 106,243 kg/year.
The building also has a complex centralized control management system, an automatic fire extinguishing system for the document storage area, a 1,000 kVA Power Substation as well as plumbing, sanitation, electricity, data, public address, security and CCTV facilities.
