Zara Castellana

The new ZARA store is located in the Castellana 79 building, former headquarters of AXA, the building was refurbished by Ortega 10 years ago transforming it into a commercial and office spaces containing Habitat and FNAC stores. The building has 5,000 square meters of commercial area and is located in an undoubtedly strategic area in Madrid. The design of the new ZARA store incorporates long corridors and walkways that lead to cubes or miniboutiques on each side of the store. The layout is designed to improve the customers’ travel through the store and place the clothing in the center of all looks. ZARA’s decision for the Castellana store was to go for a very luminous minimalist store model, with white mannequins and open spaces separated by translucent screens and where white (not black) is the predominant color.

The role of JVVA was to optimize the smoke control and evacuation system by using a performance-based approach based on international best practices and state-of-the-art modeling for both Smoke & Fire and Evacuation. After a holistic study of the proposed smoke control and evacuation system, substantial improvements were identified compared to the system provided in the original design, which lead to an improved experience for the customers and at the same time ensuring the safety of the occupants in case of fire. Thanks to our computational modeling capacity and JVVA’s commitment to the customer, we were able to provide innovative and viable solutions within a very short time frame.