Caméléon

Programme: Construction of a mixed use building housing private sales, a children's day care centre, a restaurant, office spaces and storage for the Caméléon clothing company.

About: The desire of developers was to build an ambitious project that would become a reference of ecological design in Brussels landscape. Commercial buildings are generally not environmentally friendly. They usually require considerable energy input in terms of heat or cooling to provide the conditions for optimal customer comfort. The challenge posed by the developers was met with a consistent design of the building at all levels and with the valuable assistance of specialized consulting firms. Each choice in the building design was the subject of a performance analysis to maximize its environmental impact: the choice of materials with respect to their balance of life and their inertial capacity, maximizing the contribution of natural light, ventilation and cooling by free-cooling, solar protection against overheating, retention and recovery of rainwater, the production of renewable energy and the installation of educative content for visitors have achieved the "low energy" fundamentally criteria opposed to commercial practices. Cameleon was the first major European textile shop that does not require air conditioning and has been selected by the Government of Brussels as exemplary sustainable building.