award García Mercadal at project with School teacher Julio Clúa and former students Natalia Clúa and Pilar Longás.

A project rehabilitation project designed by University of Navarra professor Julio Clúa, his brother Jaime and School of Architecture of the University of Navarra Julio Clúa, his brother Jaime and architecture graduates Natalia Clúa and Pilar Longás, has been recognized with the award García Mercadal de Arquitectura. It is a residential building of six dwellings located at Paseo de Ruiseñores issue 18 in Zaragoza. 

The jury of the competition highlighted the winning project the care "down to the smallest detail of design for the sake of energy efficiency and greater respect for the environment" and resulting in a "comfortable, functional and sustainable building, with emphasis on its appearance". With the commitment to solutions such as ventilated facade, insulation of up to 14 cm, carpentry with thermal bridge break and double chamber, external folding louvers for solar control, or the implementation of aerothermal energy (with heat recovery) as source energy for underfloor heating and hot water production. These are decisions that have achieved a building close to "almost zero consumption".

As the authors told Heraldo de Aragón, "We found a building that was not only abandoned, but also vandalized, and we had to work very carefully because it lacked foundations. We have made an effort to provide it with a series of systems to achieve optimum habitability. And, in its physiognomy, we wanted to give it a modern and courageous language, starting from the premise of not demolishing the building and integrating it fully into its surroundings, maintaining the existing height so as not to break the transition between the adjoining 5 and 14-story buildings."

Materials: a point core topic in rehabilitation

The roof and facade materials, as well as the terraces and lattices that surround them, have been decisions core topic "that give the building a special personality", as the authors of the work pointed out to the media.

The existing building was in very poor condition, due in part to the scarcity of resources in its construction, dating from the 1940s, so the rehabilitation has dealt with everything from the ground on which it rests, to the last finish, through construction processes such as micro-piling, structural consolidation and implementation, thermal and acoustic protection, the provision of accessibility to all spaces, the rehabilitation of the residential use of the building obtaining car park places that were not available and an updated formal adaptation.

The award of Architecture Fernando García Mercadal is a award that dates back to 1986 and is awarded by the high school of Architects of Aragon in recognition of the Aragonese architect who bears his name. Its goal is to value the architecture executed in Aragon and to recognize the best responses to technical, expressive, economic, social and environmental problems.