Ullsteinhaus – Berlin

Background

The Ullsteinhaus is one of the most famous buildings in Berlin and one of the greatest examples of the 1920s’ architectural style called “Brick Expressionism”. Built to be the headquarters of a large publishing house, today it houses various types of offices.

Purposes

Geoclima was commissioned to manufacture a new chiller to serve the air conditioning system of one of the building’s floors. The new unit had to guarantee excellent levels of efficiency, low environmental impact and silence.

Challenges

However, as regards the installation, a critical issue emerged: considering the location of the building on a very busy road, a sufficiently large crane could not have been used. Therefore in the design phase it was necessary to take into account the fact that a smaller crane would be used.

Project

Together with our German partner Benndorf und Hildebrand, we have designed an air-cooled Circlemiser chiller with 330 kW of cooling capacity (93.8 RT), HFO-1234ze (GWP <1) and capable of guaranteeing an EER level of 3.79 (W/W)*. To allow installation with the smallest crane, the unit was designed to be demounted into portions that did not exceed 1600 kg. The various parts were then reassembled once they were transported to the roof.

*Cooling kW/RT = 0.93 – Cooling EER BTU/Wh = 12.93