Page 88 - ELEMENTS EUROPA (EN)
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THE BUILDING’S MECHANICAL, ELECTRICAL
AND PLUMBING FEATURES
THE “MACHINE” serve. All scales of design are involved, from the enormous
shafts traversing all floors to make up the lantern’s “air
The inside of the Europa building purrs to the sound of conditioning backbone” (3 vertical shafts each with a section of
a sprawling machine ensuring the hygrothermal and visual more than 3 m²) to the plethora of small air outlets arranged in
comfort of its occupants, while at the same time providing them elliptic rows in the floors of the conference rooms.
with the electricity necessary for their work. The “machine”
takes up quite a lot of space. Made up of production and The plans of each mains network are governed by specific
treatment systems installed in special service rooms, as well as rules: the ventilation ducts (small, medium or large, fire-
mains distribution networks running through technical spaces resistant or not), the water pipes (insulated or not), the cable
(ducts, shafts, suspended ceilings and raised floors), it resembles conduits (high or low-voltage cables), etc. The ducts and pipes
the veins and arteries of the human body. must be kept confined to the (limited) space assigned to them,
while at the same time remaining accessible for maintenance.
THE SERVICE ROOMS Developing the plans for the technical installations so that
everything is in its proper place involves a considerable amount
The whole -3 and -4 basement levels, part of the -2 level of work, carried out by the engineers and architects working
as well as the whole 12th floor are taken up by service rooms. in close cooperation. The clarity of the design of the technical
The distribution of the various technical systems on these spaces is a sine qua non for a rational arrangement of all the
floors is the result of a logical assessment of several different various pieces of equipment.
criteria, searching for the best ways of reducing the length of
distribution conduits, limiting the risks of pollution or explosion, Each of the situations involved requires a specific architecture,
facilitating the entry of fresh air and the evacuation of spent air, as seen in the following examples.
making it easy for heavy and/or bulky equipment to be moved in
or out, grouping similar systems to facilitate maintenance, etc. THE MAIN SHAFTS
For instance, the 12th floor is the home of the gas-fired CHP
system, the gas boilers, the cooling groups and towers, while The positioning of each pipe/duct in the limited space of a
the high-voltage rooms, electricity generators, electric batteries, shaft, itself subdivided into compartments (by the type of mains
rainwater cisterns, the sprinkler system, etc. are located in the and/or degree of resistance to fire), is like a Chinese puzzle,
basement. in particular because of the rules that require standard radius
curvatures for any change of direction or thicker pipes/ducts at
As regards the air conditioning systems, some are on the 12th connections and fire dampers.
floor (those serving the conference rooms, the offices in the
south wing and the toilets), while others are in the basement DISTRIBUTION OF AIR SUPPLY IN THE CONFERENCE
(those serving the offices in the west wing, the restaurant and ROOM FLOORS
the basement meeting rooms).
The vast amount of available space allows for a layout without
THE DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS any geometric constraints. Air is supplied to a limited number
of places carefully positioned in the raised floor and enters the
With all rooms in the Europa building artificially lit and air- rooms via floor-mounted outlets positioned along the tables
conditioned, a large amount of technical facilities needs to be (one outlet for every two seats). The large amount of space
integrated throughout the structure. Although no longer visible taken up by the ducts linked to the vertical shafts requires the
once construction has been completed, the technical areas use of a raised floor reinforced by cross-members in order to
reserved for the mains distribution networks form an integral be able to position the floor supports not at the junctions of the
part of the architecture, as do the representative rooms they tiles but in the gaps between the ducts.
