The new Gewerbehaus Islas was desinged as a modern and innovative office building and finished in only 11 months. It‘s located in Samedan between Inn River and kantonal road. Its headstrong curtain wall is inspired by the meandring riverbed. With the rolling elements of rusty iron sheet it is reminiscent of the stepped hillsides and the color of the near larch woods in autumn. At the same time the nearly complete glazed veneer is reflecting the engadinian landscape in consistently new and sudden semitransparent sections. Due to the frame construction on the buildings perimeter and the central vertical access it is able to host very different functions on 4 floors, which provide a total capacity of 1400qm. The current programs are a migrolino-store, a dental surgery, a beauty clinic and an architecture office.
As a result of the special and clever energy strategy the building can be called „energy storage - house“. With the aid of solar panels on the roof the solar heat will be stored in a resounding water tank (with a heigt of 12m, 20.000l). In a similar manner the fair faced concrete floors also serve as a storage. The stored energy of solar panels and exposed concrete is returned to the house by an intelligent control. In additon to the water tank, the rejected heat of the refrigerator system of the migrolino store in the ground floor will saved too. In the case of thermal shortage in the wintertime a proportionally small oil heating system will be activated. Therefor it‘s possible to stoke the whole building with solar energy across nearly the complete year.
