THE FUTURE OF HEURA’S WORKSPACE
THE GOAL of this project is to envision the future of HEURA FOODS workspace, considering existing technologies and climate change scenarios and using Barcelona’s historical building as a site for intervention. HEURA FOODS was founded in 2017 by Marc and Bernan in a co-working office in the center of Barcelona. It was created with a social mission-turned-business that would empower people to change the current food system to a more sustainable, healthy, and nutritious one. They call themselves the successors of meat. The challenge of this project is to envision how a company like this will operate in the future. TINGLADOS BUILDING is a 1920s construction in the harbor of the Barceloneta neighborhood. It was chosen as the scenario of the project due to its historical value, proximity to the sea, and potential liability to climate change circumstances.
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SEA LEVEL RISE is a process that is a reality and will continue to intensify in the next years. Due to the rising temperature of the planet, the defrosting of glaciers will affect the coastal areas. This project uses it as an opportunity to envision the future of a specific area of Barcelona at a 1m rising sea in the year 2065. Envisioning the future of the company involves imagining not only the scenario but also the products that the company will commercialize and when we combine climate change + the future of food the workspace of the future is ALGAE. With high nutritional values, the biggest source of protein in nature does not require land for production and also has the highest level of carbon sequestration, it is the element that will certainly be present in Heura’s future.
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FLOATING ISLANDS is a system that has been effective in many flooded regions as a resilient agriculture method as well as landscape and leisure spaces. It is a strategy that can be accommodated to different scenarios of sea level, maintaining useful areas and also reducing the wave tidal energy. This method was chosen to be applied in the project area in order to reduce the effects of the sea level rise and to create areas for production and research for heura foods products. Different systems of islands were created and the structure is Biorock based.
The islands were thought to be a growing system, as the company grows and the sea level continues to rise the islands will grow along always mixing different types of ambiances in order to create biodiversity.
The intervention in the building aims to evoke its historical value and uses it as a research center for heura as well as a community space to bring awareness for
environmental issues, and social justice. The new building is itself a lab for heura, as it works as a photobioreactor that produces biomass for heuras products and biofuel to power the building.
The building itself works as a photobioreactor, where microalgae flow in between glass tubes while receiving sunlight. Below the building there is a degasser tank, in this tank the algae mixture loses the 02 to the atmosphere, increasing the air quality of its surroundings, and also pumps the mixture back into the glass tube. The whole process happens in a loop, where the degasser gives the mixture to the glass tubes, the glass tubes then receive the sunlight as it passes throughout the whole facade, then it comes back to the degasser tank, loses 02, and then is directed to the biomass and biofuel tanks. Biomass is further used for the Heura products and biofuel as energy for the building.
for the interior layer some technologies were used as proposals: google mesh for people to have remote meetings and physical interactions; sensor based smart tube that can collect,analyse data and monitor the levels; real time location sensor that can control light , temperature and humidity; environment pods for meetings and metaverse glasses.
meeting rooms
for the meeting room design the proposal is a rail to arrange the benchs in different ways according to the necessity:
environment pods
the environment pods have a sensor of presence that recognize when the person is close to it,
and could be able to change the climate and the environment inside the pod for the workers;
labs
the labs have algae smart tubes that control the levels of the photobioreator;
model
