With energy to spare

The 'eco-building' concept would seem to be as alien to Polish soil as Islamic Fundamentalism, if some reactions to the idea on the Warsaw market are anything to go by. But it could well enter the city's vocabulary along with Grontmij Real Estate Polska's Tulipan House "If you go to Amsterdam," says Hans van de Sanden, Managing Director of the Dutch developer, "you will see that all the buildings of the last three years, to my big surprise, are being constructed with underground cold water storage, in order to cool the building. I worked in Amsterdam for five years and then that was unimaginable: today it is common practice." This method of regulating a building's temperature is characteristic of 'eco-buildings'.Tulipan House, a 15,000 sqm building, construction on which is due to begin next year, is part of a European Union-inspired initiative, the SARA (Sustainable Architecture Applied to Replicable Public-Access Buildings) project, whose aim is "to construct sustainable, cost effec