The ICTA-ICP building located on the UAB (Autonomous University of Barcelona) campus is a research centre in environmental sciences and paleontology. Consistent with their fields of research, the building's users bet on an ambitious response to sustainability challenges. The building, an isolated volume of five floors of 40x40m and two basements, accommodates the following uses. On the ground floor: lobby, bar, classrooms and administration; on the following 3 floors, offices and laboratories; on the deck, greenhouses and rest areas; in the semi-basement, parking and machine rooms; and in the basement, warehouses and the rest of the laboratories. Both offices and laboratories are uses with a lot of internal load that tend to be hot. The ICTA-ICP has been designed to take advantage of it in winter and to dissipate it in summer. We plan the building as an adaptable and flexible infrastructure to possible changes of use.

The ICTA-ICP building located on the UAB (Autonomous University of Barcelona) campus is a research center in environmental sciences and paleontology. Consistent with their fields of research, the users of the building opted from the start for a building prepared to give an ambitious response to the challenges of sustainability.
The building is an isolated volume of five floors of 40x40m2 each and two basements, and houses the following uses: on the ground floor, hall, bar, classrooms, meeting rooms and the administration; in the following 3 floors, offices and laboratories; on the roof, orchards (greenhouses) and resting areas; in the semi-basement, parking and machine rooms; and in the basement, warehouses and the rest of the laboratories.
Both offices and laboratories are destined for uses with a lot of internal load and therefore tend to be hot. The ICTA-ICP has been designed to take advantage of this internal load in the winter and to dissipate it in the summer. We plan the building as an adaptable infrastructure, flexible to possible changes of use, developing several simultaneous strategies that complement each other:

. Structure
A concrete structure has been chosen, with a long useful life and low cost, as well as a lot of thermal inertia, which contributes directly to the passive comfort of the building. The amount of concrete has been optimised by distributing its mass in favour of thermal exchange through post-tensioned concrete slabs and lightened with tubes in the central part through which the air circulates. In the upper and lower part, the thermal mass of the slab is activated with radiant systems based on geothermal energy.

. Skin
The concrete structure is wrapped and protected by a low-cost bioclimatic outer skin built from industrialised agricultural greenhouse systems that, opening and closing automatically, regulate solar capture and ventilation, managing to improve the interior temperature in a completely natural way and guaranteeing basic comfort in the spaces in between and circulation.

. Courtyards
In the middle of the building, four vertical courtyards, with staircases that punctually connect the different levels, guarantee light and ventilation in all the workspaces, reducing the consumption of artificial light and, therefore, lowering the internal loads. These patios, as well as all the space between the building and the perimeter gallery, house various plant species, improving comfort thanks to the adjustment of the humidity gradient.

. Basements
The building also takes advantage of all the contact with the ground of its two underground floors to pre-climatise the air renovations of the building, both through the air chamber generated by the pine beams of containment, and with the air chamber of the sanitary forge.

. Wooden boxes
Inside this improved climate there are some well-insulated wooden boxes, with practicable glass openings, which have given the working spaces comfortable conditions. The arrangement of these boxes changes on each floor, adjusting to the needs of the users, creating generous and indeterminate interstitial spaces that link with the circulations and make up more informal meeting and resting spaces.

. Climate and management
The building has been designed to accommodate three types of climates associated with different intensities of use:
Climate A: the intermediate spaces that are heated exclusively from passive systems and bioclimatism; Climate B: offices that combine natural ventilation with semi-passive radiant systems; and Climate C: the laboratories and classrooms that have a more hermetic and conventional operation. Each type of climate has its associated systems. The behaviour of the building is monitored and controlled through an automated computer system that processes and manages an important set of data to optimise comfort and energy consumption. The system has been programmed to maximise passive behavior and minimise the use of non-renewable energy. The building constantly reacts and adapts, opening and closing, activating and deactivating, managing to exhaust the natural possibilities offered by the environment. In this way, the perception of comfort is much more authentic, less artificial than usual.

. Materials
In the choice of materials, a mineral material with a lot of thermal inertia and a long useful life has been chosen for the structure and materials with low environmental impact for the secondary enclosures, prioritising the use of materials of organic origin or recycled and dry construction systems that are reversible and therefore reusable.

. Water
The building works in depth throughout the water cycle, optimising demand and consumption based on the reuse of rainwater, grey, yellow and black water.