Nagelmackers settles in the first wooden high-rise building in Brussels
Bank Nagelmackers exists 275 years and closes this jubilee year with the move to Monteco, a classic office building in the European district that was built by real estate developers Nextensa and ION. The name is a contraction of ‘Montoyer’ (after the Montoyerstraat where the building is located) and ‘ecological’. ARCHI2000, the designer of Monteco, opted for a concept that is distinguished by the combination of a sustainable timber frame construction and the use of intelligent technology that should reduce the economy.
Monteco is the first wooden high-rise in Brussels and will be developed towards a Breeam Excellent certification by 2023. The substructure of the building is entirely made of wood, with the exception of the concrete core. This will also be visible in all areas, giving the building an exceptional aesthetic appearance. The wood used has a PEFC label. It comes from a radius of up to 500 km from the construction site and extracted through sustainable forest management, where the felled trees are replanted. After 25 years they have grown completely again.
The BMS system controls the temperature, heating and ventilation. Automatic water and electricity meters will soon follow the smallest leak. Solar panels and two heat pumps were installed separately for all cooling and heating consumers. The high windows provide a lot of light and offer employees a feeling of light and space. They were built from the floor to the ceiling, about 3 m high, thus providing a sense of space.