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Customer application 21 December 2020

Reboot on Kapstadtring Street

At the end of the 1960s, the “City Nord” development project in Hamburg included the German headquarters of Esso. However, thanks to the economic boom in West Germany, the city center was soon bursting at the seams, which drove the decision to relocate large corporations. The building on Kapstadtring in Winterhude, a district in northern Hamburg, was designed by the Hamburg architectural firm Schramm and Pempelfort. Soon, after complete internal renovations, it will reopen as a modern office and administration building. The WAGO-I/O-SYSTEM 750 is an important technical cornerstone that ensures the 47,000 square meters of usable space can be easily adapted to employees’ needs.

Hamburg’s City Nord development demonstrates that new ways of working, due primarily to the introduction of computerized workstations, have largely rendered open-plan offices obsolete. This attitude change in the 1990s hurt the image of City Nord. The building complex, designed by renowned architects of the time, failed to keep up with the times in terms of function and technology. Over the course of the City Nord revitalization, the open-plan office gave way to individual offices, which were created through renovation of existing buildings, new projects and demolitions.

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Better Adaptation to Needs

The four wings of the complex on Kapstadtring street unify the preservation of historic buildings with energy efficiency and functional flexibility. The open plan has given way to smaller segments of space that can be flexibly configured. This grid system allows both individual workstations and spacious offices for entire teams. The concept makes it possible to quickly adjust the space to meet occupants’ needs at any given moment. If offices are needed to accommodate two or three people, or even an entire project team, then the necessary space can be created in a variety of ways. Modular partition walls can be freely repositioned on a grid, but on their own can’t achieve this flexibility. Instead, building technology, such as the heating system, must also support the desired spatial configurations.

Heat is provided via convectors located under the windows. The level is regulated using a combination of a valve-controlled hot water supply and variable speed fans. The entire system is controlled by the WAGO-I/O-SYSTEM 750. The building automation experts from Caverion Deutschland who were responsible for the renovations implemented the restoration using two types of convector controllers. Up to 16 convectors can be connected to Type 1 controllers. Type 2 can control up to 24 units thanks to an I/O system expansion. For this purpose, Caverion linked two convectors to one analog output from the WAGO-I/O-SYSTEM 750. “In our system, two convectors form a fixed pair that we can switch using one output on the WAGO node,” explains Jan Sierck, project manager at Caverion. Since flexibility was a priority in the project, the system had to be “relatively easy to reprogram,” says Sierck. The system thus delivers spatial flexibility, which is crucial for reorganization or renovation. This ensures that the building can adapt to changes requested by tenants.

The WAGO PLC (750-881) handles comparison of the target and actual temperatures within a room during everyday office operations. In office spaces, the target value is 22 °C (72 °F). If this temperature is exceeded by one kelvin (1.8 °F), then the heat controller is triggered and the hot water valve is controlled using PWM (pulse width modulation) signals. The WAGO-I/O-SYSTEM simultaneously controls the fan speed in the convector units as well. The setting range is determined using a 0–10 V analog signal.

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The reason for selecting two different, scalable expansion stages from the WAGO-I/O-SYSTEM was, according to Sierck, in order to create the smallest divisible room spaces. The minimum area can be just one grid space, for example to create a copy room with a small storage area in a corridor. In light of this extremely space reconfiguration flexibility and the versatile options for programming the controllers, it was unclear at the project’s beginning where the technology itself would be installed. The original design called for the installation of the WAGO-I/O-SYSTEM in distribution boxes, which would then be recessed into the floors. “The idea arose in the project team, born out of the desire for flexibility, to locate the control technology directly by the convectors. This was easily achievable using WAGO components,” says Sierck, explaining the system selection process. “The WAGO-I/O-SYSTEM can also be used for communication. ETHERNET lets us get started quickly, and we can collect data from all the other communication systems like KNX, DALI or BACnet using interfaces and transmit it in packets to the building control technology.

In addition to the wall convectors, Caverion also designed structurally identical ceiling convectors for interior floor spaces. The control technology for these is located in one of two substations on each floor. The fire dampers are also switched using these controllers. The WAGO-I/O-SYSTEM 750 collects data from more than 100 dampers per floor and transmits this data in packets to the building control system via ETHERNET.