On behalf of AG Vespa, 360 Architects designed a new "Northern Regional Office" in Merksem for the Antwerp Local Police.

The new regional office is located between Borrewaterstraat - where the previous office was located - and Van Stratenlei, a stone's throw from Merksem's district office. The building, which was designed by 360 architects from Ghent, has about 3,000 m2 of floor space, divided between a ground floor and 3 upper floors with reception, offices and meeting rooms, and a basement with underground parking and cells.

In this project, Ingenium was responsible for the design and supervision of the technical systems, as well as for the EPB reporting. AG Vespa’s overall sustainability goal is to make all buildings in this development Nearly Energy Neutral. This led to the use of heat pumps (in combination with geothermal energy storage) for heating and cooling the police station, as well as for heating in the ancillary facilities. In addition, solar energy was utilized to generate electricity (via PV panels) and domestic hot water (via solar water heaters).

The police station is, in and of itself, a “high-tech” building. In addition to “standard” office equipment, this specific building also requires additional features to meet requirements related to, for example, security, access control, and video surveillance. Comfort cooling was achieved using climate control ceilings.

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Future-oriented building

The project was started in 2012 and the technical installations were designed in 2014-2015. At that time, energy requirements were a lot less stringent than today and minds were usually not yet ripe for (striving for) fossil-free (construction). Even technology that has since proven its added value was still quite new at that time. As a result, building owners were often hesitant and/or unambitious to bet heavily on sustainability. AG VESPA, however, did have this intention, and went along with our vision to look further ahead than the regulations of the time.

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(Just barely) Fossil-free

Therefore, a BTES was chosen that enables passive cooling and provides most of the heating demand via water-water heat pumps. Because there was insufficient space on the site for a more generously sized BTES , peak demand is met by 2 relatively small gas-fired boilers. Heat and cooling are delivered via climate ceilings, which was progressive for the time. At that time, classic fan coil units were still chosen as the 'standard' solution, which, although they heat and cool faster, also consume a lot more. With simulations, we were able to convince the client that the climate ceilings would provide sufficient comfort. And today the energy savings have proven to be an additional advantage.

Because a relatively large amount of hot water is consumed in the building - including in the showers and cubicles - a solar water heater was chosen, while for electricity generation full use was made of PV panels on the building's roof.

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Anticipating EPB requirements

At the time the techniques of this police station were designed, there were already epb requirements but it was not yet mandatory to include a certain share of renewable energy. Projects like this police station have a lead time between design and completion of several years. In this particular case, the strategic redesign of the police stations on the Antwerp territory caused an extra long duration. Today, the prices of gas and electricity taken from the grid are much higher than in 2014-2015. By opting for sustainable and renewable energy at that time, the operating costs are much lower today at the same comfort level.