Lund Kristallen is a new city hall with a very ambitious green profile meaning that the building will only use a fraction of the energy normally consumed by a building of this type. The house's sustainability profile is created from an active effort to design a building with an excellent social context, integrated resource management, low power consumption, good indoor climate together with an advanced energy strategy based on solar power, earth water cooling and a grass roof as well as economically sensible solutions, all part of a holistic balance within a sustainable house. Lund’s city hall is expected to become the greenest city hall in Sweden will host citizen service centre and administration over 25.000m2 and is due to be completed in 2012.
The city hall is located right between Lund’s distinguished, historical city centre and a large new park to the west. The building appears facetted, constantly changing from glass and solid panels, with a broken down scale, thereby integrating the relatively large building into the urban structure of Lund. The sculpted shape and varied facades facilitates an appearance of life and vibrancy, both internally and externally. Behind the building’s open and transparent west façade is a full height atrium space that draws in the adjacent park’s lush green atmosphere and connects all the amenity spaces across the floors. The space creates an open and vibrant area that connects staff and visitors. The new Lund city council is a sustainable building, adherent to the Swedish Green-factor, which determines the percentage of green plot required through a calculation according to the schedule and description. Green-factor states that the vegetation and green areas of the site must be at least 40%.
The building design and energy-resource strategy is summarized as follows: - Compact construction geometry with limited proportion of "cold" wall - Optimized geometry for daylight illumination, as both direct and reflected light, which provides large amounts of good natural light and minimize the use of electricity for lighting - Facades oriented to efficiently utilize the sun's heat during the cold season - Optimal design of climate screen, to balance out heat loss and heat gain - Passive accumulation of heat and cold in heavy, active thermal structures - A green roof, which cools the building, storing rainwater and ensures that the building becomes part of the local ecosystem, supporting the biosphere already existing in the park and the area.
