Ilha Pura: planned district uses state-of-the-art technologies in its construction

The complex that will shelter athletes, technical staves and media professionals is being built with thorough criteria of sustainability and respect to environment

To finish in time the infrastructure needed for the Olympic Games to be carried out in 2016, Rio de Janeiro is being converted in a large worksite. Men and machines are running against time to ensure that all installations are ready in due time. One of the highlights of this set of works that are being carried out is the Ilha Pura Project, building complex that will include the Olympic Village, which will work as habitation for athletes, technical commissions and media professionals. After the games, the complex will be delivered to their definitive owners in the second half of 2017.

Located in a place of rare beauty—between the sea, the lagoon and the hills of Barra da Tijuca, West Side of Rio de Janeiro, Ilha Pura is a planned district, designed by Carvalho Hosken and Odebrecht Realizações Imobiliárias, with an estimated cost around R$ 2 billion.

The project started to be built in June, 2012, in an area of more than 800,000 sq.mt., gathering high-level buildings of several layouts and maintaining large spaces between buildings to privilege the view and the ventilation. The project includes 31 residential buildings with 17 floors each, distributed by seven independent condos, in a total of 3604 apartments with 2, 3 or 4 bedrooms spread in approximately 1.8 million sq.mt. of building area.

But its features of sustainability and respect to the environment are the highlight of this planned district. The entire project was carried out in a way to minimize the environmental impact in the area and to optimize at maximum the construction processes and the use of natural resources. The result was that Ilha Pura was born with AQUA-HQE certification, given by the Fundação Vanzolini. This certification is the first that considers the specific aspects of Brazil when establishing the performance criteria of building’s environmental quality and of project management system requirements.

Ilha Pura is also the first project to receive the LEED ND (neighborhood development) certification in Latin America. This certification integrates principles of planned and intelligent growth, sustainable urbanism and green buildings, mixing the use of urban spaces with different types of buildings.

For the certifications, the project was evaluated according to the accomplishment of 17 requirements of environmental development, divided in three main subjects: integration and coherence of the district; natural resources, environment and sanitation quality; and social life and economic dynamics.

The concerns with sustainability, so present in the design of Ilha Pura were consolidated even in the construction of the worksites. The initiatives carried out include priority for selection and training of labor in the region, installation of concrete plants, reduction of the generation and reuse of surplus materials, reduction of the impacts resulting from the use of water and power sources, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GEE) and logistic planning of each phase of the works.