DH Palencia / FRPO Rodriguez & Oriol

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Energy transformation
This building is the visible part of a whole that is hidden from view. He is the head of a new energy infrastructure for the city of Palencia. A Heat Network – or District Heating – promoted by the company DH Ecoenergías, a pioneer in the energy transformation of Spanish cities. The one in Palencia is the first of a long series of similar projects that seeks to decarbonize a good part of the national urban geography, turning off fossil fuel heating – diesel and gas, of expensive international origin – to replace them with a clean network, powered by renewable resources. which will largely come from improved management of Spanish forests.

pedagogical vocation
The Heat Network runs under the streets of the capital of Palencia, bringing heating water produced with renewable energies – mainly forest biomass – to the buildings of a good part of the city. The Central, for its part, fulfills a technical function – housing the hot water production processes – but at the same time it has a markedly pedagogical vocation desired by the client themselves: making the transformation visible and supporting and allowing its dissemination. This double condition requires the approach of the problem of industrial construction not as a strictly functional issue, where only the economic performance of the building has value, but in a more broadly architectural way. In the words of Teo López, founder of DH Ecoenergías: “This project must be an icon and reference of the energy and environmental transformation, and that its architecture symbolizes the sources of renewable energy, the paradigm shift and, ultimately, the improvement of the public health of cities.”

Socket and flashlight
The architecture of the Central is symbolic, both in its geometry – which is based on energetic and economic circularity – and in its materiality – which is committed to literal and pedagogical transparency -, presenting the entire complex as an identity. Two main elements make up the building: a heavy concrete bathtub and a light steel and plastic -recyclable- lantern. The tub-plinth serves as support for all the machinery and establishes the land connections with the outside – through two large galvanized steel gates – and with the biomass silo located underground. Inside, the concrete plinth has a cover that becomes a perimeter walkway that surrounds all the machinery.

The pill-shaped plant allows optimal circulation of visitors around the entire energy process. The steel and plastic lantern reinterprets economic solutions typical of industrial buildings to, by transforming its geometry, establish a significant link with the community it serves: a small cathedral of energy. The façade of polycarbonate sheets – striated in three scales – is configured as a soft whitish glaze that rests on a delicate wire structure of galvanized and painted steel. As a final touch, a translucent tower expels the white fumes resulting from a filtering process that occupies most of the industrial space.