Forms of Energy #14

"We believe that creativity needs a context in which environment, well-being and beauty come together to support all elements that contribute to the creative process, the first of which is imagination. In an historic moment in which these assumptions are all-too-often neglected, from the very beginning we wanted the new Rainbow headquarters to be in full harmony with the beauty of the area in which it is located while respecting the environment. And people."
–Iginio Straffi, Rainbow founder

What we are about to present is the new headquarters for Rainbow, one of the few Italian companies in the field of digital animation that has come to the fore on the world stage in recent years. "Imagination Factory" is how the company defines itself on its website. The company was created by the creative and entrepreneurial skills of a young man (Straffi was 30 upon the company's founding in 1995) and is now powered by the energies of a staff that is just as youthful.

In this sense, during these dark times of widespread financial collapse, Rainbow really seems to be an arcadia of light and hope—a creative experience and entrepreneurial success that grasps the value of an architecture intended to establish a new ecologically balanced relationship with the landscape and its resources.

Sergio Bianchi's and Elisabetta Straffi's project explores the idea of transparency/grand opening towards the surrounding landscape of cultivated hills. The building nestles here without giving up its volumetric substance through the play of windows, interior courtyards, overhangs, volumetric bridges, roof gardens—a set of elements that renders the complex unitary and extremely multifaceted at the same time.

A wide variety of functions characterises the functional and spatial program which obviously seeks to define a new balance in the relationship between the hours dedicated to work and "play" by the user community. Executive offices, work spaces for manual and digital drawing and spaces for product marketing are complemented by a series of leisure areas: gym, sauna, whirlpool, swimming pool, tennis court and soccer field.

The project's other key aspect (in addition to the interpenetration with the landscape and the richness of the functional program whose goal is user quality-of-life) is the decision to create a near-zero energy building accompanied by the careful deployment of passive strategies (widespread use of natural lighting and roof gardens), efficiency of the mechanical systems (geothermal heat pumps) and the extensive use of solar energy, all within well-integrated solutions.

In fact, if the choice of natural lighting is a crucial element in a building whose users spend many hours drawing by hand, at the same time the shed roof system with its transparent north-facing glazing also has vast opaque south-facing expanses of glass that create the optimal conditions for the installation of photovoltaics.

The photovoltaic modules, having a total capacity of about 360kWp, can generate about 447MWh per year, which almost completely covers the energy needs for artificial lighting and powers the HVAC system utilizing geothermal heat pumps. The geothermal system is particularly efficient with its spiral-shaped probes that allow the exploitation of larger surface areas in contact with the earth in comparison to traditional probes of equal depths.

Regarding the relationship between energy choices and architectural form, it is interesting to investigate the reasons underlying the specific form that the photovoltaic generator takes on in this project. The photovoltaic modules are located not only on the shed as mentioned above, as well as on some canopies covering pedestrian walkways, but they are also placed on some support systems that create a sort of shed extension to the east.

Naturally, these "wings" are reminiscent of the large solar surfaces found in outer-space architecture. However, if in the 1990s the first civil constructions using PV made attempts in this direction (for example in the work of Thomas Spiegelhalter), it is increasingly clear that energy self-sufficiency is the next horizon and these large energy-producing projects do give us food for thought.

From an energy-use point of view, the goal of the building's design, with its blue photovoltaic strips (the choice of the Rainbow designers), is to generate all the energy needed for its operation. In more general terms, if that need is low—meaning that if the energy footprint associated with the building decreases—the blue strips (or the formal equivalent in other projects) will be contained within the building's physical footprint. However, very often, even in the case of well-designed buildings like the one we are describing here, the building footprint (the area needed to accommodate the mechanisms needed for producing the energy that the building consumes) is not contained within its physical footprint. In this case, the blue strips must necessarily extend beyond the building envelope.

In the Rainbow headquarters, these strips become a sort of brise-soleil that shades an area near the building—but outside the building itself. Now, if it is easy to foresee that we will be seeing buildings that project their footprints beyond the envelope edges in the future, we will also be increasingly faced with new forms conceived to provide the space necessary to generate energy; something that will, in fact, influence the spatial quality of the building's immediate surroundings.

It is difficult to say if these spaces, lying somewhere between the architectural and urban scales, will lead to the definition of a new spatial category. But there is no doubt that they will constitute an important opportunity for research and experimentation.
Marialuisa Palumbo, Alessandra Scognamiglio

Rainbow Headquarters
Project: Sergio Bianchi, Elisabetta Straffi
In collaboration with: Caterina Finocchi, Pietro Fiorentini, Marco Lorio, Valeria Menculini, Maria Gaia Mingoli
With contributions by: Syd Mead
Structure: Arch.Francesco Redi
Facilities: Elleci Progetti Ancona
Total area: 10.000 mq
Office space: 5.000 mq
Theater installation: 1.500 mq
Covered/open parking: 2.000 mq
Solar panels 1.350 per 360 Kilowatt saving CO2 emissions of 200,000 kg / year
Year: 2011