Venetian Arsenal

Venice, Italy

Once the centre of Venice's naval power, the Venetian Arsenale was once a maritime base composed of Byzantine-style buildings covering about 15% of the city. To preserve these historic buildings, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport - Venice Water Authority, turned them into brand new offices, homes and cultural institutions. Our goal was to deliver the right climate control solution to provide heating and hot water for the buildings, without disrupting the existing architecture and infrastructure.

Resourceful and sustainable climate control

We decided to take advantage of the abundant natural resource on the city's doorstep: water. To do this, we installed a water-cooled VRV system to extract thermal energy to provide heating and hot water for the Venice Arsenale complex.

Each building uses a heat pump attached to a water-loop system which connects several buildings in one complex. By installing the same system in each building, excess heat can easily transfer from one building to another in need of heating or hot water.

Through this process, our water-cooled VRV system easily achieved higher energy efficiency. It also served as the perfect solution for a sensitive restoration project such as the Venetian Arsenale because it is discreet and avoided disrupting existing architecture.

The Generatori building

One of the more recent buildings benefiting from the Venetian Arsenale renovation project was the Generatori building. A 3-storey building dating back to 1900, the Generatori building initially supplied electricity to the shipyards, and now serves as a space for offices, meeting rooms and archives.

The building uses a water-cooled VRV system to supply underfloor heating for the ground floor reception hall, meeting rooms and basement, as well as fan coil units to provide cooling and heating on the two upper floors of office space. There are also ventilation units throughout the building to ensure the air is fresh and pure. A control system enables occupants to individually control the temperature of different zones while linking it all back to a central management system.

Our VRV system was the ideal choice for this project as it could easily be connected to the water-loop to achieve a stable and comfortable climate with higher energy efficiency.