With its innovative, spectacular yet climate-sensitive architecture, this striking building sets an example for the city’s vibrant development and demonstrates how much cooling energy can be saved through architectural form. Importantly, this structural innovation provides an impetus for buildings in climatically hot regions to become much more energy efficient.
Due to its proximity to the equator, Dakar enjoys a high level of sunshine all year round. Adapted to this and to the hot climate of West Africa, the load-bearing structure of the building was placed in front of the floor-to-ceiling glazing. This provides a high degree of shading despite the transparency and extremely high proportion of glass.
The building demonstrates its high energy efficiency through the large shading component. The massive shading is used in thermal solar collectors. The thermal energy obtained is used on the one hand to generate air-conditioning chilled water via absorber chillers and on the other hand to heat water. The building is cooled by means of component activation within the concrete ceilings.
