Barcelona is known for its rich history and nightlife drawing tourists from all over the world. Known widely for its gothic and art nouveau architecture building styles Barcelona is known for its intriguing buildings. DFactory in Barcelona’s Zona Franca neighborhood is home to some of the most prominent companies in the world promoting the development of the 4.0 industry.

The building has 17,000 meters squared of building space over four floors and was built in an area that is strategically 10 minutes from the airport, 15 minutes from the center of Barcelona and has La Factoria Metro Station close to the building that allows commuters to utilize the building via public transit. DFactory was built with three pillars in mind: transparency; with mostly glass granting visibility to all the 4.0 technology to blur barriers between different companies and have common access to shared spaces, accessible to have stable building temperatures inside with solar collectors on the roof to reduce the environmental impact and sustainable with LEED Gold and WELL Core certifications showing the decimation to the environment.

DFactory was certified at the LEED Gold level under LEED v4 BD+C: Core and Shell on April 21,2022 achieving 67 out of a possible 110 points. The building scored highly in the Water Efficiency Category achieving 7 out of a possible 11 points with 1/1 in the Water metering,  2/2 Outdoor waste use reduction and 4 out of 6 in the indoor water use reduction category. The only points category the building completely missed was the cooling tower water use going 0/2. DFactory also scored highly in the Material & Resources category achieving 8 out of a possible 14 points. One of the most interesting parts of this category was that many of the credits focused on building life-cycle impact reduction and building product disclosure and optimization. Within the materials and resources used there was an emphasis on the sourcing and material ingredients of the building being as sustainable as possible.

One area where the building really lagged in credit points was the Energy & Atmosphere category achieving only 26 out of a possible 89 points. Part of this was the 2024 Optimize Energy Performance Update to the credit category adding another 20 points to the credits. Within the energy side of the building the owners can increase demand response, enhanced commissioning and carbon offsets to increase point categories going forward to aid in the clean energy consumed by occupants. Within the Indoor Environmental Quality category the building also lagged only receiving 3 out of a possible 10 points receiving 2 out of 2 points for Enhanced IAQ strategies and 1 out of 1 point for Construction IAQ Management Plan.

Within the LEED Scorecards I always take note of the Regional Priority Credits what which ones the project obtained. DFactory was able to achieve 4 Regional Priority Credits for: Bicycle facilities, Light pollutions reduction, Outdoor water use reduction and Indoor water use reduction. Water use reduction is incredibly important to the region and being able to protect resources in southern Spain.

Interested in Learning More?

LEED Scorecard: https://www.usgbc.org/projects/edificio-dfactory-barcelona

D-Factory Webiste: https://www.dfactorybcn.com/en/index.html

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