Ensemble and master plan
Shared infrastructure
campushousing complexhospitalhotelmixed-use development
Energy, water, treatment and data networks resolved once for several buildings in a development, instead of each building having its own plant.
What it solves
It saves space, energy and maintenance, because a well-kept central plant performs better than many small ones. In the tropics shared cooling frees roofs and rooms that equipment used to occupy.
Today
Reserve from the master plan the location of the central plant and the network routes, with access points for maintenance. Agree from the start who manages it and how costs are shared.
Common mistake
Letting each building solve its water, energy and treatment separately until the development is full of duplicated equipment.
Tomorrow
A development can treat its wastewater in a shared wetland, store rain in shared tanks and share solar energy among buildings. Management by the users themselves follows the example of the roughly 1,600 associations that run community water systems in Costa Rica.
Fact The Marina Bay cooling network in Singapore gives its users energy savings of more than 40% and freed about 16,000 m² of usable area in the buildings.
Where it comes from
- 1Medieval France Chaudes-Aigues, France, 14th century
The local thermal water heated about 30 houses, in what is considered the first district heating network. - 2Urban engineering Lockport, New York, United States, 1877
The first commercial shared heating system began operating, with steam sent through pipes to several buildings. - 3Tropical city Marina Bay, Singapore, since 2006
An underground chilled water network cools many buildings from shared plants and frees their roofs from cooling towers.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Ensemble and master plan
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.