ACIPI is a commercial, industrial and services association from Piracicaba. In 2019 they organized a competition to choose the project for its new headquarters – a building of great flexibility for the institution's own work activities, but also for associated companies or tenants who may share their new building in the future.
ACIPI is located in Piracicaba, 160 km from the capital of São Paulo. It is located in the city center and just 500m from the edge of the Piracicaba river. The new building accommodates the proposed program as well as it connects to the existing ACIPI building on Rosário Street. The new building which is located on Prudente de Moraes St opens up to the street without barriers or walls, just with a handrail in the sections where the interior of the lot is at a lower level. At the back of the lot, the two buildings connect on different levels.
The building materializes the ideals of encounter and service to its members through an architecture different from the traditional ‘glazed curtain walls’ so present in the office buildings throughout Brazil and not suitable to our tropical climate, depending too much on air conditioning systems and special glasses.
The new building is characterized by a servant core on the northwest facade that concentrates all vertical circulations, bathroom cores and infrastructure areas, creating a double barrier to this very warm sunlight orientation over the working areas. The entire rest of the floor is then freed up for office areas and meeting rooms, which can take on the most diverse layouts.
On the other facades, the concrete walls are combined with glazed panes, providing control of natural lighting, sun exposure and the need for artificial lighting. The glazed sections are also protected from direct sunlight through brise-soleils. Furthermore, the glazing frames can be opened, enabling cross ventilation and avoiding the need of the air conditioning in some months of the year.
Each of the floors has a particularity in its design that gives a specific character to the spaces, with variations in natural lighting, ceiling height and area.
The ground floor, with higher ceilings, houses the services that ACIPI offers to the public and therefore has free access from a landscaped entrance sheltered by a wide four-meter overhang. It connects from its side with the café square and at the back with the old building at the auditorium foyer level.
On the first floor there is ACIPI's administrative sector. This floor is fully integrated with the ground floor through a large void that makes this floor a type of mezzanine and forms a double height. Both on the ground floor and on the first floor the layout is open, without partitions.
The second and third floors will host a coworking space with more subdivisions complementing the meeting rooms in the structural balance of the southeast facade. The third floor has a different ambience from the second due to the zenithal opening that complements the natural light in the innermost portion of the building.
Finally, the basement of the building houses parking on two levels and is covered by a garden slab that forms the external green areas that delay and filter rainwater. Cisterns are also located underground, which reserve this water, which is later used to irrigate all the gardens.
