Understanding the value and opportunity this particular asset holds, our team seeked to develop a solution that creates a highly efficient, yet archi- tecturally balanced and sustainable entity, a building that can be identified as a contemporary landmark, yet present a scale that is friendly to users and optimizes its overall impact on the immediate neighborhood.

Starting with the building’s shell, the proposal attempted to explore a solution that could reform the volume’s perception without sacrificing valuable existing elements or “drowning” the building’s outline, oversimplifying the exterior. At the same time, the aim was to create a shell that could provide maximum energy efficiency and also help incorporate sustainable principles like optimum shading, ventilation, waste minimization and other.

With these in mind, the proposal took the clear direction of adding a new skin, a “veil” that could wrap the building, minimizing demolitions of the existing structure and adding both morphological and environmental value to the asset, at the same time keeping trace of some of the existing structure’s characteristics.

The new skin, comprising of a perforated, wavy façade, surrounds the building volume along its entire perimeter, its distance from the existing shell varying from side to side. The starting point of the idea was that, like a veil, it drops onto the existing volume, embracing its various extrusions & recesses.