ABB in the award-winning Monopolis in Łódź

The last bottle of spirits was produced in Łódź at ul. Kopcińskiego 58/60 in 2007. Today, the former ‘Monopol Wódczany’, whose history dates back to 1896, has been turned into a cultural, service and office centre, becoming the second such place in Łódź, after Manufaktura. Monopolis, which was built on the site of the closed Polmos factory, is a meticulously revitalised factory building complex, offering office space and a restaurant arcade, as well as the theatre-like Monopolis Stage. The owners and contractors needed only three years to make the former Zespół Zakładów Przemysłu Spirytusowego the best multi-functional complex in the world.

Oscar in the real estate industry

In 2020, the Łódź complex won the prestigious international MIPIM AWARDS in the ‘Best Mixed-Use’ category. The facility has also been honoured with many other awards, such as the Prime Property Prize or the Award Winner for the best projects in Poland in the International Property Awards 2020-2021. The largest office building of the entire complex is located in the former Monopol Wódczany bottling plant. It has four above-ground floors with an area of 7,000 m². The entire area was leased in just six months after the facility's opening. This is an outstanding result in a fiercely competitive office rental market and a sort of record.The unique nature of Monopolis attracted prestigious brands such as ABB or Clariant. ‘An office building, no matter how modern it is, is not enough nowadays. The workplace is no longer a room with a desk and a telephone from 9 to 5’, said Krzysztof Witkowski, President of the Management Board of Virako, the owner of the facility, at the design stage. ‘This is a space where you can spend time comfortably, take your laptop and phone and work in the green spaces, go to the café one floor below, meet a client in a restaurant or leave your child in the kids club next door.  

Complicated puzzle pieces

Virako focused not only on innovation and combining history with a modern feel, but also on the highest quality for all the solutions installed in the buildings.

‘It is one of the most technologically advanced examples of urban revitalisation not only in Poland, but also in the world’, said Artur Popko, Vice-President of the Management Board and Budimex’s Chief Operations Director, which was the main contractor, once the project was completed. The company selected many specialised subcontractors who completed individual sections of the entire complex puzzle. One of them was Swegon, responsible for the ventilation and air conditioning equipment.

‘We delivered HVAC devices to the Monopolis facility: GOLD air handling units, Swegon Zeta REV cooling units with a total cooling capacity of 700 kW, equipped with integrated pump modules, combined with ABB ACH550 converters and air humidification systems’, explains Karol Cywiński, Technical Department Manager at Swegon. ‘The owner decided to choose Swegon because of its long-standing relationship and experience with our devices from previous implementations’. Swegon devices were also selected for the Monopolis 2 stage, currently under construction. In this case, cooling devices with a total cooling capacity of over 1 MW were employed and were also equipped with ABB ACH550 frequency converters.

‘Our devices work there in chillers and ensure the continuous and stable operation of the entire system’, adds Dominik Grodzki from ABB. ‘The air conditioning works in a very fluctuating way – sometimes the air needs to be cooled down a great deal, and other times, there is not much demand for chilled air. Inverters ensure that everything works to the users’ expectations’. One key advantage of these devices is that they are also highly energy-efficient. According to estimates, using them in a chilled water system will provide between 20% and 30% savings in the energy that would be nominally consumed by the entire system. From the owner’s point of view, and in terms of the costs generated by using air conditioning in such a huge facility, this is a very significant gain.

Not the last word

Swegon and ABB have been working together for many years. The Swegon refrigeration plant in Italy has chosen ABB as a strategic partner for drive technology. ‘ABB is the main supplier of the frequency converters used in our refrigeration equipment, heat pumps and Datacooling equipment. ABB products are also used as drives for compressors and pump modules in all applications, including devices from the ABB ACH series as well as the ACS 380 and ACS 355’, says Karol Cywiński. The construction of Monopolis will be completed in the third or fourth quarter of 2021, but, as the owner has announced, this is not the last word on this project.

text: Sławomir Dolecki, photos from the website of the City of Łódź www.uml.lodz.pl