Verde - Office Building

Considering the unique location of the complex, the basic urban planning and architectural idea of ​​“Verde” is to integrate both territories as closely as possible – the historical center of Riga and the new development district of Skanstes, creating a “connecting link” – both by offering green structure connecting solutions and the principles of openness and transparency, freeing up and opening the ground-level outdoor space for public use as much as possible, which would increase the connectivity between the historical part of Riga and the new part of the city in the Skanstes Street area. Architecturally, the idea is realized by raising the ascetic parallelepiped-shaped office buildings above the greened and landscaped public entrance floor. The courtyard is also designed to be distinctly green, following the principles of “shared space”, emphasizing the importance of openness, common use and integrity. This green common outdoor space, together with the planned park, will form a continuous connecting greenery system. The unique geometry of the building plot and the dynamic situation created by the gentle turn of Skanstes Street, largely the perception of movement, have inspired the “rotated” structure and composition of building masses, which indirectly indicate the dynamic nature of the site and respond to the context of the site. The distribution of the volume of each building volume with the rotation of its part, reduces the scale of the volume, the perception of different building masses, as well as the offset in places makes it possible to create roof terraces - outdoor spaces for office needs. The project of the office building complex, applying a complex approach, using various principles of sustainable thinking and project solutions, has been developed in accordance with the criteria of the BREEAM certification system - at the “BREEAM Excellent” level.

The location of the new office complex is also significant – it is the intersection of Skanstes and Hanzas streets, which in a way can be considered the border where the historical center of Riga ends and a new, dynamic part of the city with extensive development opportunities begins. The visual solution of the buildings attracts special attention. The composition of the building volumes consists of two architecturally equivalent and interconnected 11-story buildings, which together with the “green wall” at ground level form a single complex (45,000 m2). Creating a scale appropriate to the existing urban context, both building volumes are spatially divided into smaller, mutually offset structures. The mutual offset of the buildings creates a geometrically “cut” impression, with the overhang of the upper building resting on massive, differently inclined reinforced concrete columns.

The constructive system of the building was chosen rational, consistent with the selected spatial plan, the configuration of the building's volumes and the intended visual image of the building. The building was built in monolithic reinforced concrete frame structures with monolithic reinforced concrete flat floors and a rigid core in the middle of the building, in which functionally necessary vertical communications and auxiliary spaces were located. A monolithic reinforced concrete wall was created around the perimeter of the underground floor, which, together with the building's load-bearing walls and frame, is supported on piles approximately 30-35 m deep. If you look at the layout, it seems simple, but the customer's desire was to obtain a freely planable and flexible plan for each floor. The area of ​​each floor is about 1700 m2, which can be very easily transformed into 1200-1300 m2 of large offices or several smaller ones. One of the most interesting architectural solutions is the columns visible on the exterior of the building. 10 such columns have been built in the A-building: their length reaches 24 m and the slope is up to 11.5 degrees, diameter 1 m, concrete C50/60. The calculated load on a long column is up to 1000 tons.