GROHE's Blue and Red kitchen taps and Europlus E basin mixers have been chosen to feature in The Edge - the greenest building in the world.
Currently used by accountancy firm Deloitte as their Amsterdam office, in 2014 the building was rated “outstanding” by the environmental sustainability assessment agency BREEAM – the highest rating ever.
With GROHE’s commitment to sustainability, the brand, which is one of four nominees in “Germany’s most sustainable large corporations” of the 2015 German Sustainability Awards, was the perfect choice to supply product for the project.
The Edge was conceived by London-based PLP Architecture, in close collaboration with Deloitte and project developer OVG. The 15 storey building is a completely connected, eco-friendly hub, where workers control everything from finding a parking space to meeting their colleague via an intelligent app. The building is powered by solar panels that produce more electricity than the project uses- in fact, The Edge uses 70% less electricity than a typical office building.
The building also uses water sustainably, utilising recycled rainwater to flush the toilets and water the building’s plants. In the summer, warm water is pumped to an aquifer underneath the structure where it is insulated and re-used to heat the building in the winter months.
Ron Bakker, founding partner at PLP, comments: “With The Edge, we tried to unite different aspects of the office environment by integrating technology with sustainability in a way that redefines the concept of the workplace. We looked at different strategies, like phasing and multi-purpose functionality, and also read up on studies about how we could balance sustainability with cost efficiency, which helped us discover that there were better ways to build the structure”.
GROHE’s Blue and Red taps were the natural choices for this sustainable project. The Red tap keeps filtered kettle hot water ready for immediate use at all times, removing the need for a kettle and therefore saving energy and reducing water wastage. The Blue provides three types of filtered water- still, sparkling and semi-sparkling- straight from the tap, and is designed to save up to 86 percent of greenhouse gas emissions compared to bottled water. The public toilets are also equipped with GROHE’s sustainable Europlus E basin mixers which harness flowing water and turns it into electrical energy.
Graham Wilby, Head of Projects GROHE UK, comments: “We are delighted that GROHE’s products feature in The Edge, as the project mirrors our sustainable ethos. GROHE is committed to the efficient and economical use of resources, and is continually looking for innovative ways to reduce water and energy consumption without compromising on product performance.”
Photo: Ronald Tilleman.
