About the building

The Goeppert-Mayer office building is the first of four planned for the GPP Business Park – a complex of energy-efficient office buildings located in the northern part of Katowice. This complex is part of a process of transforming post-industrial areas into new business zones. Office space within the building has already been leased by international companies such as ABB, Ericsson and ING Services Polska.

The aspiration was to create an A class office building that would be perfect in every functional and visual detail, enable efficient energy management and, offer a friendly working environment for its occupants. The building utilises environmentally-friendly construction materials and sophisticated building systems. The decision to apply for a BREEAM certificate was made in order to demonstrate a high level of environmental awareness.

The investment is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and has been registered as a research project due to the advanced energy-efficient solutions to be incorporated on-site in collaboration with the Cracow and Silesian Universities of Technology.

Miroslaw Czarnik, President of the board, GPP says: “An Outstanding rating for the Goeppert-Mayer office building proves that this project is extremely ambitious, complying with the highest standards of sustainable construction. Energy-saving solutions and advanced equipment makes this office modern, optimised and people-oriented office – it also decreases operational charges, increases worker satisfaction and productivity. It improves health, offers greater flexibility, enhances energy and environmental performance of the workplace. Construction of this sustainable building was followed by the decision to apply for a BREEAM certificate, to demonstrate high level of environmental awareness. We decided to apply for BREEAM certification thanks to its adaptability to local climate and legislation and because it is the world’s leading design and assessment method for sustainable buildings.”

Environmental features

• Trigeneration – to annually deliver over 1 547 MWh of electricity (100% of the building’s demand)
• permanent monitoring of thermal comfort
• highly-efficient heat recovery system
• air-conditioning systems based on heating and cooling beams
• advanced system of façades  with automatically controlled blinds integrated with the light intensity control system
• access to daylight guaranteed to all building users
• energy-efficient lighting system with light intensity sensors – minimum 40% energy savings
• energy-efficient offices’ humidification system designed and built to minimize the risk of microbial contamination
• energy-efficient lifts with energy recovery function
• rainwater recycling and secondary utilisation system
• charging stations for electric vehicles
• use of certified materials with low content of environmentally-harmful compounds (VOC), derived from certified sources, produced with limited CO₂ emissions

Building services

The Goeppert-Mayer building will lead the development’s energy efficiency programme with the application of an innovative new tri-generation system. This system, fuelled by natural gas, will be used to generate electricity, heating and cooling, the building’s entire energy demand. The main advantages of tri-generation include significant energy savings and low greenhouse gas emissions. Other low carbon solutions will include advanced facades system, chilled beams and central humidification system which will all be managed by the innovative Building Management System (BMS). The building’s energy use will be approximately 50% lower in comparison to a standard A class office building.

The projected primary energy demand of the building – less than 100 KWh/m²/year (in a reference building – 260 kWh/m²/year)

Primary energy for heating and ventilation is 28 kWh/m²/year. The amount of fresh air is 20% higher – 36 m³/h/person (in a reference building – 73 kWh/m²/year)

Green Strategy

Many innovative and energy-efficient features have been implemented in the GPP building including a local tri-generation energy source that achieved 20 credits in Energy category. An sustainable building must also provide a healthy environment for all occupants, to achieve this goal we also focused on the Health & Wellbeing category achieving all possible credits (14). Transforming the post-industrial area into a green and friendly working environment enabled us to also achieve the full available credits (10) in the Land Use & Ecology category.

Some features went beyond the standard BREEAM requirements. Four credits were achieved in the Innovation category: ENE5 – Low or Zero Carbon Technologies for 25.81% CO2 emission reduction, WAT2 – for additional water meters, WST1 – for waste management and reduction during construction and POL4 – exemplary credit for NOx emission reduction well beyond current standards.