UNStudio team wins competition for low-carbon Luxembourg workplace

UNStudio and HYP Architects have emerged victorious in a competition for the design of the Kyklos building in Belval, Luxembourg. 

The office building represents the final part of a major redevelopment of an old industrial site, which now holds a university and technological center, residential and office spaces, hotels, and retail.

The scheme’s design is driven by a desire to “propose a building with the smallest possible carbon footprint.” Using an early prototype of a UNStudio-developed tool called ‘Carbon Builder,’ the architects studied several design options from a sustainability standpoint, resulting in a concept whose carbon footprint is 80% lower than that of a traditional office building in Luxembourg, the team claims.

Part of the team’s environmental-driven process centered on material choices. “The possibility of using steel with 100% recycled content and working with best practice concrete mixtures, improved the carbon performance of the project significantly,” UNStudio notes, who determined that the hybrid steel-concrete structure offered a more optimal carbon performance over a long period.

“Our new carbon tools have shown us that timber is not always the best option and that highly sustainable buildings do not all have to look the same,” UNStudio founder Ben van Berkel said about the scheme. “We can now demonstrate that interesting geometry and high levels of sustainability are not mutually exclusive.”

The resulting design contains eight floors of office spaces above a mixed-use lower level. While the lobby is imagined as a “unified space” merging reception and commercial functions, a large circular staircase doubles as a main circulation route and a statement element when viewed from the adjacent Place des Bassins, encouraging the use of stairs over elevators.

Above, the office floorplates branch from a circular core, suspended from steel cables. The structural method largely removed the need for load-bearing columns, enhancing the flexibility of the interior layouts. The circular floorplates also give meaning to the building’s name, with ‘Kyklos’ being the Greek word for ‘circle.’

News of the development comes weeks after UNStudio completed a Shanghai flagship store for Huawei behind a ‘petal’ facade. Last month, the firm designed the world’s highest-standing spokeless Ferris wheel in Seoul, in addition to a four-tower mixed-use scheme in Hangzhou, China.