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The information centre promotes environmentally friendly construction and environmental awareness in general. It was designed with principles of sustainable development in mind and planned to reach the standard of the passive building.
The info centre provides space for a variety of functions. On two floors it contains offices, lecture halls, boardrooms and a café/cafeteria. There are two main entrances to the building. One entrance from the south-east faces a picturesque green space with a pond. The other main entrance in the south connects the info centre to the exhibit halls.
Both the main exhibit hall and the info centre frame a small plaza between them. Through the middle of the plaza, splitting it in half, runs a roofed link connecting the two buildings. The plaza may serve as a place for rest and gatherings during large exhibits.
A special care was devoted to the selection of environmentally friendly materials. Wood was recognized as the most suitable material for its obvious environmental qualities. Therefore, wood is used in the design in different forms from plain lumber and engineered wood to wood fibre boards. As a result, the building's embodied energy is minimal and it's potential of recycling maximal. But not only materials create a green design. Great attention was also given to the systems of heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC).
The design of the building as a whole offers a feasible solution to the task of creating an information centre that would well utilise and advertise energy saving and environmentally friendly construction of the future.
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