TECHNOLOGICAL CENTRE FOR EV BATTERY REPAIR in Alicante
An Interior Space within an Interior Space

Environmental Innovation / Interior Design / Industrial

SUSTAINABLE AND HEALTHY DESIGN:
The Technological Centre for EV Batteries Repair in Alicante is a proposal for ENVIRONMENTAL INNOVATION, that developes a pioneering and innovative project in Spain by addressing the new current challenges of SECOND-LIFE RECYCLING of electric batteries and their treatment for ‘REUSING’ outside the automotive sector.

It represents a milestone for ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY, the CIRCULAR ECONOMY and the PROXIMITY ECONOMY, materializing a project that ‘REDEFINES’ the traditional car repair workshop.

The proposal incorporates 7 STRATEGIES for a sustainable environmental ‘reusing’, reducing its impact on the carbon footprint and improving people's HEALTH and quality of life, while also ensuring the quality of the ‘industrial environment’ where it is developed.

Strategy 1. ‘REUSING’ OF EXISTING BUILDING: A KEY PRINCIPLE OF SUSTAINABILITY
Instead of building a new space to house the innovative facilities, an existing industrial warehouse was reused, greatly optimizing energy consumption and significantly reducing carbon emissions by eliminating the construction process.

Strategy 2. AN INTERIOR SPACE WITHIN AN INTERIOR SPACE
The proposal is managed with the same speed and ease as a film set –thin dividing surfaces and simple assembly with controlled lighting– through a spatial sequence that articulates the REPAIR CYCLE:
1. Socialization Area (reception and waiting area);
2. Working Area (repair Centre);
3. Circulation Area (vehicle access-exit).

Strategy 3. REDIFINING THE TRADITIONAL CAR REPAIR WORKSHOP
Through a process of optimising the ‘know-how’ of the activity, the Technological Centre is able to redefine the memorable experiences we have of the traditional car repair workshop by a great efficiency of the layout.

Strategy 4. ‘ACTIVITY-BASED WORK’: FLEXIBILITY FOR A HEALTHIER ENVIRONMENT
The new workspace develops the concept of ‘activity-based working’, where the geometrical layout of the space offers different alternative spaces to support the wide variety of activities that coexist in the daily life both employees and users: individual work, collaboration, online meetings, calls, socialising, etc.

Strategy 5. A STAGE FOR SOCIAL ACTION
This strategy contributes to the creation of an INCLUSIVE and CULTURALLY DIVERSE environment, improving the perception of a ‘cold industrial community’. Users and workers interact together, united as well as separated, by a large glass surface (analogous to ‘the Curtain’ of a theatre performance) that blocks the way but facilitates Vision through.

Strategy 6. MANIPULATION OF THE ARCHITECTURAL ENVELOPE PROMOTES PERCEPTION OF TACTILE DYNAMICS
In this proposal the research on ‘Induced Ways’ is taken up again to achieve, by means of folded and curved geometries –as well as displacements and erosions–, 2 double simultaneous Induced Ways. Let us remember that the formal manipulation of the architectural envelope is a very powerful amplification engine for the development of our Haptic Experience.

Strategy 7. A DELIBERATED CONTRAST
The new design manages to stand out from the ‘industrial’ through a provocative visual and haptic contrast with the existing, enhancing essential aspects of architecture such as Simplicity, Experience and Light, by means of the use of white surfaces/glass, fixed panels and movable surfaces.

Photographer: Alejandro Gómez Vives