This building is located in the main Solovetsky village. It serves as a harbour building that manages incoming and outgoing tourist boats. It also serves as a visitors’ centre where tourists can find information about the services, landmarks, activities, tracks and many other topics. The ground floor of the building also contains a restaurant. The first floor is designated to the administrative workers of the harbour and other businesses. There is a souvenir shop and an administrative block.

The building is positioned to comfortably serve the tourists that arrive to the island or are preparing to leave. The harbour dock is extended with a wooden plank structure that guides the tourists in the right direction. All waiting rooms have a view over the harbour to increase user comfort. Also external terraces are placed to allow people to enjoy the beautiful seashores of Solovki over a cup of tea.

The harbour building is located close to the sea and the renovated harbour. Therefore the shape of the building is in compliance with the weather conditions that might occur: heavy winds, high humidity solar exposure. The roof and the facades are covered with zinc-titanium sheeting that is fully ventilated to protect structures from moisture damage. The glazing elements have been strategically placed to invite daylight into the internal spaces.

The harbour building is equipped with a ground-source heat pump (GSHP) system that provides the building with heating and hot water. The technology is based on the collection of heat from the ground and to amplify that heat through a series of chamber-treatments. The visitors’ centre is equipped with a vertical closed-loop piping system that cover an area of 175 m2 and has a total length of 693 metres. This is in accordance to the full heating demand of the building and not to the reduced demand. This is because the building is projected to increase its usage over time and therefore it is beneficial to have a bigger system in place already.

The COP of the selected GSHP is 4.0 with the power of 79.6 kWh which means that for every 1 kWh electrical energy that it uses, it returns 4 kWh of heating energy. That means that for delivering the annual heating demand of 84 MWh, the heat pump requires 31.2 MWh electricity (seasonal COP 2.8). In order to further implement sustainable solutions, the visitors’ centre will be equipped with a PV-panel system that can answer to the electrical demand of the GSHP. Calculations show that in order to produce annually 31.5 MWh electricity on a 45° roof with a CGIS PV-array of 15% efficiency, 270 m2 of panels have to be installed with a total peak power at 40.5 kWp.