Zara invests in 238 million euro headquarters

Image: Zara Zara has invested 238 million euros into a new headquarters that will house the Zara sales and design teams within Inditex’s complex in Arteixo. Construction on the new headquarters will begin in January, subject to the necessary permissions, and are expected to last around two years. The new facilities, which are being designed with a focus on their lines, broad open spaces, energy efficiency, and sustainability credentials, are meant to reinforce the horizontal work dynamics between designers, patternmakers, and sales professionals, underpinned by creativity and articulated around open collaboration and communication. The new five-story building (with another two underground floors for parking) will complement the visual identity of the adjacent offices, which accommodate the zara.com operations. Zara to get multi-million euro headquarters in Artexio The building will be predominantly white and feature large horizontal windows with protruding eaves to provide protection from the sun while flooding the interiors with natural light. A structural trellis will introduce pillars generating huge open spaces that will further facilitate the dynamic workflows between the various departments. The plans, designed by Batlleiroig, the architecture firm which was responsible for the recent expansion of Zara’s facilities in Arteixo and several of the brands’ head offices, is based on an orderly and structured design of flexible workspaces that lend themselves to easy and multiple reconfigurations. The proportions and dimensions of this huge building give it a ‘shape coefficient’ which, together with its highly insulated façades and roofing, reduce its energy consumption and facilitate energy self-sufficiency, thanks to energy just taken from three new wind turbines located in Coruña’s Outer Port. The new building will be fitted with a next-generation facility management system to ensure that its various elements always operate in efficient harmony, adapting them continuously in response to indoor and outdoor temperatures and air quality. By using technology in the design phase, the impact of the construction process will be minimized in the interest of sustainability. That industrialization, coupled with intensive use of recycled materials, will reduce the works’ carbon footprint and waste generation. It will comply with the stringent requirements of the sustainable building benchmark US Green Building Council (USGBC) –and Zara hopes to achieve its highest certification, LEED Platinum. Each of the sales teams’ floors will have two large, connected work areas. Two big longitudinal outdoor areas adjacent to the east and north façades will add to the existing square outside the dotcom building, promoting users’ health and wellbeing, in keeping with the strategy embarked on at Inditex’s headquarters in 2018 of upgrading and integrating the complex’s outdoor spaces. A grid of walkways will connect various parts of the new building with the adjacent buildings to ensure internal connectivity at the complex and optimal interaction between the various departments.
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