The first regional FAN Courier hub designed by PPAE — the starting point of the architectural language later defined for the national hub network. With a final built area of approximately 11,000 sqm in two phases (2015, 2021), the complex brings together the mail-sorting hall and the company's regional administrative headquarters for the central area.

Challenges

The project had a dual stake: defining a clear architectural identity for FAN Courier's future regional hubs and integration on a site with a complicated industrial past — the former Tractorul Brasov complex. At the start of execution it was discovered that the site, apparently taken over free of construction, contained an extensive network of underground technological channels, with sections up to 4 × 4 m, continuing even beneath the neighbouring properties and under the street. The foundation design had to be urgently reanalyzed on site, in order to fit the building over an underground reality invisible in the initial analysis.

Solutions

At Brasov, the visual vocabulary of the network was defined for the first time: the curved envelope of perforated sheet metal on a steel structure, mounted as a secondary skin over the office body, distinct from the adjacent sorting hall. It is the same language that later returned at Cluj, Sibiu and, at a different scale, at Stefanesti 2.

The double-height reception hall — finished in grey granite, warm wood and blue joinery — raises the public-interface zone above the standard of the logistics typology, as an expression of a company with direct interaction with its customers.

The 2020-2021 extension doubled the sorting hall into two distinct functional zones, transit and couriers, and added the operational annexes (roll-container storage, driver accommodation) needed for the growth of regional volumes.

Result

For FAN Courier — the first regional hub with an assumed visual identity, later replicated across the national network, plus an operational base extended in 2021 to support the growth of volumes. For PPAE — the definition of a recurring architectural vocabulary for a major client and concrete proof of the ability to adapt the project to major site surprises.

Do you have a logistics or industrial investment with several development stages in preparation? The PPAE team can support your project from concept to completion. Contact us