OHIM headquarters, Alicante
A European headquarters of three volumes set in the landscape, with BREEAM’s top rating
EDDEA, in collaboration with Ayesa, developed the winning entry in the competition called by the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), a European Union agency, to extend its headquarters. The body, which protects the trade marks and designs of the market of the Union’s 28 countries, occupies in Alicante one of the most significant buildings in the city and its surroundings.
In 2013 EDDEA took on the design of the extension to this ‘headquarters’ on the outskirts of the city, comprising a new office building for 500 staff, a conference centre—with a 450-seat auditorium—and a new reception and welcome building that ties the complex together.
Redesigning an emblematic building for a historic institution
After analysing the client’s needs, the proposal establishes a link between the existing space and the future one, and with the philosophy the organisation wishes to convey.
The project brings together two strategic questions: the possibilities and limitations of the existing building and its plot, and the corporate values that the institution wants to express through the new architecture.
The proposal consists of two pieces linked by a garden facing the sea, with exchange areas connecting them. The reception and welcome area acts as a backdrop: it gathers up the volumes of the existing entrance and builds a new façade that is at once continuous and fragmented.
One of the most sustainable buildings in Spain
In 2015 the headquarters became the first new building in Spain to achieve the highest rating of the international BREEAM sustainable construction certificate, which assesses ten main criteria: energy, ecological land use, management, transport, waste, water, health and wellbeing, materials, pollution and innovation.
Among the most significant measures behind this recognition are a 70% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, a system for managing and monitoring energy costs, supply from renewable sources, air quality control, reduced tap flow rates, easy waste recycling and the use of certified, sustainably managed timber.
