Designed by Saraiva + Associados with sustainability consultants A2M, WellBe is an office building in Lisbon's Parque das Nações and the future headquarters of Portugal's largest bank: Caixa Geral de Depósitos. The building contains offices and retail space across eleven floors, with a ground floor that opens to the city and expansive landscape gardens accessible to the public. Conceived as Portugal's first Passive House office building, WellBe is designed to exceed Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) standards and has achieved WELL Platinum, BREEAM Excellent and WiredScore Gold certifications.
Location
The building occupies a prominent corner on Avenida Dom João II, adjacent to a roundabout, with an L-shaped footprint that follows the western and northern edges of the plot and encloses a semi-subterranean building. A landscaped roof above this extends the public realm, providing 3000 square metres of accessible green space, and stitches the building into the surrounding streets. Irrigated using rainwater and recycled greywater, this planting covers around 40% of the ground-level footprint—an act of urban greening that supports the city's biodiversity while reducing the urban heat island effect.
Energy performance
WellBe's upper levels feature a parametric façade composed of carefully calibrated vertical and horizontal fibreglass fins supported by a metallic structure. This design reduces solar gain while maximising natural daylight, effectively lowering cooling demand and contributing to a highly efficient indoor environment. Together with the building's passive design principles and high-performance envelope, these strategies enable WellBe to consume around 30% less energy than a comparable modern office building.
Future-proof floorplan
The office floors are based on an 8.10 metre structural grid, with each structural bay divided into 6 x 1.35-metre facade modules. This flexible design allows workspaces to be adapted simply and quickly—from cellular offices to large open-plan layouts—without conflicting with the building's structure or window layout. A clear floor-to-ceiling height of 3 metres is maintained throughout the office areas, while raised floors and suspended ceilings accommodate the building's mechanical, electrical and technological services, allowing them to be upgraded or reconfigured as workplace requirements change. Lifts, bathrooms and technical spaces are grouped in central service cores, leaving the perimeter free for bright office spaces with expansive and uninhibited views.
Sustainability certifications
Formerly occupied by fuel storage infrastructure, the site required extensive environmental regeneration before building. As the architects explain, the removal of these petroloeum hydrocarbons and replacing them with a building of such green credentials was "healing...an industrial wound from the city of Lisbon's past." WellBe has achieved Passive Building certification alongside WELL Platinum, BREEAM Excellent and WiredScore Gold, reflecting an integrated approach to energy efficiency, occupant wellbeing and long-term environmental performance.
