© Gärtner+Christ

The task was to extend the two existing warehouse buildings between the Magdeburg Harbor and Shanghaiallee to create an “ensemble of three striking blocks that form a harmonious triad representing the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.” The new structure directly adjacent to the headquarters and including underground parking, six floors of offices, and two recessed floors, will be built in line with the “Sustainable Construction in HafenCity” gold standard.

© Gärtner+Christ

Viewed from the northwest, the new extension is a companion piece to the Maritime Museum, with the two buildings flanking the “Heinemann-Speicher” in the middle. From the Ericus Bridge, the new construction highlights the corner of the ensemble on Shanghaiallee and makes a characteristically urban statement.

© gmp

Like the Gebr. Heinemann company, the design reflects both the traditional solidity of the warehouse district and a flexible adaptation to modern requirements of HafenCity. Although a glazed structure connects it to the “Heinemann-Speicher,” the extension is independently useable with an inviting transparent space on the ground floor. Besides serving as an employee entrance, it can accommodate commercial spaces, an arcade, or a café. On the upper floors, users have maximum flexibility in floor plan design. All the requisite functional areas are compactly organized around the central access area and the available floor space can be used for an open-plan office, individual offices, or anything in between. Like the main building and Maritime Museum, the design is characterized by multistory windows, a vertical façade relief, and brickwork typical of the region. The area freed by the two recessed floors forms two spacious roof terraces/roof gardens, mediates between the different eaves heights of neighboring structures, and adds an urban tone through dramatic cubature.

© gmp

Gebr. Heinemann SE & Co. KG
Gebr. Heinemann is one of the world’s three most important players on the global travel retail market. The Hamburg-based business supplies over 1,000 customers in over 70 countries. As far as the retail trade is concerned, Gebr. Heinemann is active at 58 airports in 24 countries where it operates 232 Heinemann Duty Free & Travel Value shops, franchised brand boutiques, and concept shops. The company also runs boutiques at
border crossings and on cruise ships. Gebr. Heinemann has been headquartered in Hamburg’s HafenCity since 1879. The company is steered by cousins Claus and Gunnar Heinemann, the fourth generation of the Heinemann family. Gebr. Heinemann has 5,500 employees worldwide. In 2011, the family-owned business had a turnover of 2.1 billion euros. In 2009, the two owners were presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Hamburg.

© gmp

gmp · von Gerkan, Marg and Partners · Architects
The architectural practice gmp was founded in 1965 by Meinhard von Gerkan and Volkwin Marg. Since its inception, it has grown to include four additional partners, one partner for China, ten associate partners, and more than 500 employees in ten offices in Germany and abroad. gmp is one of the few practices with a generalist position, taking responsibility for a project from the design idea and its realization right through to the interior design. Over the past 45 years, Meinhard von Gerkan, Volkwin Marg, and their partners have planned and constructed buildings in most major German cities. Their projects include small scale homes, hotels, museums, theaters and concert halls, office buildings, commercial centers and hospitals as well as research, educational and sports facilities, buildings for transportation, trade and industry buildings and master plans.

The University at Buffalo (UB) has unveiled HOK’s dramatic design for its new School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences building on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The seven-story medical school will bring 2,000 UB faculty, staff and students daily to downtown Buffalo and, at more than 500,000-square-feet, will be one of the largest buildings constructed in Buffalo in decades. HOK’s design features two L-shaped structures linked to create a six-story, light-filled glass atrium that includes connecting bridges and a stairway. Serving as the building’s main interior “avenue,” the atrium will be naturally illuminated by skylights and two glass walls, one along Washington Street and one at the terminus of Allen Street.

© HOK

The building, which HOK is designing for LEED Gold certification, will have a facade clad with a high-performance terra-cotta rain-screen and a glass curtain wall system that brings daylight deep inside. Incorporating the NFTA Allen Street transit hub into the medical school’s ground floor provides convenient mass transit access, furthering the development of a sustainable, vibrant community. The new medical school will help the university achieve objectives critical to the UB 2020 strategic plan: creation of a world-class medical school, recruitment of outstanding faculty-physicians to the university and transformation of the region into a major destination for innovative medical care and research.

© HOK

“The new design allows us to grow our class size from 140 to 180, educating more physicians, many of whom will practice in the region,” said Michael E. Cain, MD, vice president for health sciences at UB and dean of the medical school. “It allows UB to hire more talented faculty, bringing to this community much-needed clinical services and medical training programs.” “HOK’s design for UB’s medical school creates the heart for the new Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus while integrating and connecting to the surrounding communities,” said Kenneth Drucker, FAIA, design principal for the project and design director for HOK’s New York office. “The building’s atrium will be the focal point for bringing together clinical, basic sciences and educational uses fostering collaboration.”

The building’s first two floors will house multipurpose educational and community spaces for medical school and community outreach programs. A second-floor bridge will link to the new John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital and the Conventus medical office building under construction along High Street adjacent to UB’s new medical school. The third, fourth and fifth floors of the medical school will feature core research facilities and approximately 150,000 square feet of state-of-the art research laboratories.

“The new lab spaces will allow us to efficiently group faculty by thematic research areas,” said Cain. “Because they are modular, we can change their size and configuration as needed.” The sixth floor will house some of the country’s most advanced specialized medical education facilities, including an expanded patient care simulation center that will feature the Behling Simulation Center currently located on UB’s South Campus. It also will house a surgical simulation center where medical students can conduct surgeries in a simulated operating room. A robotic surgery simulation center will train students and physicians in remote control surgery technologies.

© HOK

The medical school’s administrative offices and academic departments will be located on floors three through seven. The seventh floor will house gross anatomy facilities. “From the new school’s active learning environments to the highly flexible research laboratories supporting multidisciplinary teams of investigators, the design supports a range of global trends for the design of academic and research facilities,” said Bill Odell, FAIA, HOK’s director of science and technology.

“The building layout brings together academia and research to foster collaboration and interdisciplinary patient care,” added Jim Berge, AIA, principal-in-charge for the project and HOK’s director of science and technology in New York. “There will be many opportunities for students, faculty, researchers, administrators and members of the local medical community to interact.”

© HOK

The $375 million medical school is funded in part by NYSUNY 2020 legislation. Groundbreaking is scheduled for September 2013 and construction is expected to be complete in 2016. HOK’s Science + Technology group has designed medical schools and research laboratories for Florida State University, the University of Alberta, Washington University in St. Louis and The Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton, Pa. The firm served as lead designer for The Francis Crick Institute’s cardiovascular and cancer research center in central London and won an international competition to design the Ri.MED Biomedical Research and Biotechnology Center in Palermo, Sicily. HOK is a global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm. Through a network of 24 offices worldwide, HOK provides design excellence and innovation to create places that enrich people’s lives and help clients succeed. In 2012, for the third consecutive year, DesignIntelligence ranked HOK as the #1 role model for sustainable and high-performance design.

The design process was driven by the idea of making things with fewer components which do more, a research of a synthesis to shape structure and elegance.

The shape emerged from a desire of research on these aspects of essentialism, translated and analyzed into a geometry of the stripe (the subject) wrapping around an imaginary column (the action). The main design issue was to refine the single step in deep relationship with the others, in other words, working on the single, in the whole. The module is flexible, but the mutual interdependence of the components generate redundancy that stabilizes the system.

The connections between the pieces generate two load stripes, that together compose the back spine of the staircase. There are two possible structural configurations of these spirals: in the first case, both spirals gravitate to the ground, in the second case, the lower spiral goes down and the upper one is suspended from the ceiling.

© courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

© courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

The design places the station at the centre of a network of pathways, skybridges and metro lines envisaged by the KAFD master plan.  Connectivity diagrams and traffic across the site have been mapped and structured to clearly delineate the pedestrian routes within the building, optimize internal circulation and avoid congestion. The resulting configuration is a threedimensional lattice defined by a sequence of opposing sine-waves (generated from the repetition and frequency variation of station’s daily traffic flows) which act as the spine for the building’s circulation. These sine-waves are extended to the station’s envelope and strictly affiliated to its internal layout, translating the architectural concept to the exterior.

© courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

The façade patterning reduces solar gain while it’s geometric perforations contextualize the station within its cultural environment. The overall composition resembles patterns generated by desert winds in sand dunes, where multiple frequencies and repetition generate complex natural formations. The King Abdullah Financial Disctrict Metro Station applies a discrete subset of elements which are correlated through repetition,
symmetry and scaling; optimizing the design while simplify technical challenges without compromising spatial quality or design ambition.

© courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

Riyadh Metro
With a population of more than 5 million, the capital Riyadh is Saudi Arabia’s biggest city. Experiencing rapid growth, Riyadh’s population has more than doubled since 1990. City planners have announced that Riyadh will build a new public transport system to serve its fast-growing population. In July 2012, the government shortlisted four consortia to build a metro system in Riyadh, and in December that year, the government announced that the new Public Transport Commission will be established to regulate public transport services and private investment in the sector. King Abdullah has instructed the new Riyadh Metro be completed in four years.

© courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

Prince Khaled bin Bander, the governor of Riyadh, said the project is progressing to plan and the ArRiyadh Development Authority has released details of the city’s public transport plan including six metro lines that will serve as the backbone for public transport in the city:
1. Blue line: The 44km long line will serve the Olaya-Batha-Hayer axis and will include 39 stations.
2. Green line: The 22km long line will move along King Abdullah road, linking KSU in the west to King Fahad Stadum in the east. It will include 14 stations.
3. Red line: At 45km, it is the longest line. It will be constructed along Madinah, with the old train station in the middle of the line.
4. Orange line: It will link King Khaled International Airport to the new King Abdullah Financial District, with stops at Princess Norah University and Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University.
5. Yellow line: The 26km long line will be constructed along King Abdulaziz Road and will include 26 stations.
6. Purple line: This line will server eastern Riyadh and will feature 9 stations.

Miami Beach is a unique city in so many ways. It is one of the youngest cities in America – and perhaps right now one of the most vibrant and dynamic. Its streetscape is characterized by a lively walkable urban fabric with a friendly human scaled environment under the cool shade of tropical trees and art deco canopies – except at the convention center. It is a dead black hole of asphalt in the heart of one the most beautiful and lively cities in America. Our mission is to bring Miami Beach back to the Convention Center – and to imagine an architecture and an urban space unique to the climate and culture of Miami Beach.

We propose to roll out an urban fabric of paths and plazas, parks and gardens that forms an archipelago of urban oases throughout the site. At the heart of it – we introduce a central square to become the pivoting point of the entire neighborhood. Becoming the front door to the convention center, and the convention hotel, a front lawn to the revitalized Jackie Gleason Theatre, a town square for the city hall, an outdoor arena for the Latin American Cultural Museum, and the red carpet for the big botanical ball room.

“We have devised a strategy that combines urban planning and landscape design to create a neighborhood characterized by human scale, pedestrian connections, shaded spaces with public oriented programs lining the streets and squares. A neighborhood that, depending on the season, the weekday, or even the time of day can be perceived as a lively downtown neighborhood or an inviting public park.” Bjarke Ingels, Creative Director BIG

The square creates a series of intuitive connections across the site – a diagonal that connects the Soundscape to the Botanical Gardens and Holocaust Memorial. A north-south connection joins the Collins Canal to Lincoln Road and naturally channels the flow of convention visitors to the liveliness of Lincoln Road. A green network of public spaces that stitches together all of the adjacent neighborhoods – formerly separated by the convention center – into a complete and coherent community – for both visitors and residents. All public programs – old and new come together on the square. All great cities have a great square – this will be Miami Beach Square.

“Rather than scattering all the program across the 52 acre site we have decided to concentrate it around the center piece of our public realm – Miami Beach Square bringing focus to the renovated Jackie Gleason Theater, the entrance of the convention center and for the first time ever creating a worthy civic presence to Miami Beach City Hall,” Jamie Maslyn Larsen, West 8, Creator of Soundscape Park.

By popular demand we have found a way to preserve and enhance the architecture and programming of the Jackie Gleason Theatre. By making it all public at the street level – opening up lobbies, restaurants and cafes on all sides – we make the Gleason a lively centerpiece in this new neighborhood. Towards the Square we propose to extend the fly tower with a performing arts center with various spaces for rehearsal and offering a visual connection to the public. Adjacent to the Jackie Gleason Theater sits the new Latin American Cultural Museum consisting of a base of public programs opening up on the square. The building form creates a covered shaded event space on the square blurring the transition between inside and outside.

Today the Miami Beach City Hall is almost like a left over wedged between random neighbors surrounded by traffic. Our proposal places it rightly in the middle of the town square with amble space for public expression and at the heart of communal life. The Miami Beach City Hall and Botanical Ballroom book end the Square making it a natural extension of the civic activities of city hall. To the north the botanical ballroom opens up allowing for beautiful views of the botanical gardens and the memorial. The Ballroom has an entrance to the south and to the north allowing for seamless connectivity to the convention center – under the shade and shelter of the canopies.

Rather than being the hermetic mono programmatic box that the Miami Beach Convention Center is today – a single program at the size of an urban block- we propose to consider the Convention Center an actual urban block complete with different programs – grown together to form a continuous architecture. A gradual transition from public to private – and from cultural to civic – conference to residential turns a stroll around the block into an experience of continuous variation. Along the entire west adjacent to the various gardens and the new square – the main entrances to the convention Center and Conference Center occupies the ground. The hotel lobby spans the entire south elevation in continuation of the Convention Center lobby. The Hotel façade as pulled back forming a cascade of terraces for the south facing hotel rooms – decreasing the perceived height seen from the Gleason.

The Roof of the Convention Center is framed by a green roof drawing the outline of the urban block – framing the hotel gardens and the roof parking interspersed with shade giving landscapes. As a reoccurring annual event we propose to sponsor an art foundation that will deliver a roof art piece to cover the remaining roof surface turning it into a giant ever changing canvas seen from the air as well as the roof terrace of the hotel. An ever changing giant canvas that will annually challenge contemporary artists with an architectural scale canvas – seen from the roofs and penthouses of adjacent buildings, from airplanes and google earth.

“Realizing that a challenge that seemed to be driven by two incompatible agendas was actually the opportunity – to create a convention center district that is not only for convention-goers but, more importantly, for residents,” Jack Portman, Portman Holdings and JPA.

About BIG: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group is a leading international partnership of architects, designers, builders and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research and development. BIG is led by partners – Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Klok Pedersen, Finn Nørkjær, David Zahle, Jakob Lange, Thomas Christoffersen and Managing Partners, Sheela Maini Søgaard and Kai-Uwe Bergmann – with offices in Copenhagen and New York. In all our actions we try to move the focus from the little details to the BIG picture. www.big.dk

About Portman: Portman Holdings is a multinational real estate development, investment and management company that has been in operation for over sixty years. The firm specializes in large-scale urban mixed-use projects, hospitality development with particular focus on convention center headquarters hotels, residential, and commercial properties. www.portmanholdings.com

About CMC: CMC Group is a Miami-based, full-service real estate development, construction, and investment company, and is recognized as one of South Florida’s premier luxury condominium and commercial developers.

The story of construction of a grand-scale expo complex in the city of Saint Petersburg was covered by Archi.ru back in 2009. Back then, a joined team of Eugene Gerasimov architects and nps tchoban voss offered to the city an elegant composition of several parallelepipeds that would house the expo halls, and the “arch” building that was fully covered in glass of bright shades and colors and looked like a cross between a snake and a bullet train. This version was approved as the main concept; however, in the course of the development of the land site and narrowing the specifications, the architectural and planning solution of “Expoforum” underwent such drastic changes that it now made sense to speak about the development of a new project.

The changes affected not only the architectural image of the future exhibition center but also the provisions of the master plan. At this point we will remind you that the complex will be built in the Pushkinsky district of Saint Petersburg, on the ground of the former “Shushary” state-owned farm: located a ten minutes’ drive away from the “Pulkovo” airport, this site borders on the Peterburgskoe Highway, the Pulkovo Lake, and the residential area that belongs to the farm. It is pretty obvious that from the standpoint of successful development of the expo business the key factor is the proximity to the international airport, this is why the front part of the complex still faces the highway. The way the main territory is used, however, was dramatically rethought and rearranged by the architects.

First of all, the transport infrastructure of the future “Expoforum” was more carefully thought out. While originally the architects placed the pavilions and the congress center on the land site of a square shape one of the edges of which in fact “barged into” the shore area of the lake causing legitimate questions, now the site took on a shape of a smoothed-out trapeze with its edges fringed by automobile roads. The territory of the exhibition center is accessible by two fully-fledged driveways – from the southeast and the northern sides of the land site, the northern crossing with the Peterburgskoe Highway being more developed and presenting a grand-scale flyover, because on this side the exit from the main two-level parking garage is situated. The architects also provided for a traffic circle on the rear side of the complex – it will help to separate more efficiently the traffic flows that are headed to different halls of “Expoforum”.

The composition of the complex itself also changed beyond recognition. In the original version of the project, the public and recreation space occupied as much as a third of the entire site – in fact, the whole roof of the underground parking garage was treated as an open-air venue for public events or even for exhibiting airplanes and heavy machinery. Upon a closer look at this idea, however, the architects admitted that the climate of Saint Petersburg is not exactly conductive for organizing frequent auto or aviation trade fairs, and this is why the land site is now filled with buildings almost completely: instead of a giant windswept “marching ground” there appears a system of wind-protected squares, courtyards, and little streets. The function of the centerpiece of the composition is still performed by the covered pedestrian passage; now, however, the buildings of the exhibition center are evenly spaced on its either sides, so on the layout “Expoforum” looks like a tree pictogram with branches shooting off its trunk.

As far as the functions are concerned, no significant changes were made to the project. As earlier, “Expoforum” includes the expo, congress, and business centers, 3 and 4-star hotels, as well as a freight forwarding unit and the engineering infrastructure facilities without which launching such a massive organism into operation would have been impossible. The congress center, the hotels, and the two business centers are joined together and placed in the front housing line – one can say that these are the magnificent upper branches of that “tree” and the main facade of the entire “Expoforum”, its “face” that will welcome the visitors coming down the Peterburgskoe Highway. Perpendicularly behind these buildings, there are the expo halls. “Ultimately, these halls are nothing more than plain hangars – simply because nothing more effective has been invented so far to serve the expo functions – Eugene Gerasimov explains – The only novelty that we introduced was breaking them up into separate segments. They used to be simply huge but now their area has shrunk while their numbers have grown”. Analogously, the “snake” building from the previous project was fractured: each object of the first line can function independently – this helps to make the construction priorities as convenient to the investors as possible, as well as to provide for more effective and efficient operation later on. By the way, about the construction priorities: first, there will be built the buildings of the first line and three expo halls out of six, while the above-ground parking garage will be placed on the territory that will later on be used to build another three expo halls (the parking stalls being moved underground).

And, while originally this facade was facing the highway with rainbow colors, now the complex is designed in an entirely different way. While the golden casing is still there, the architects change it from a uniform coating into a net with cells of different sizes. Interesting is the fact that this is not rigid orthogonal grid – each cell sports rounded, as if melted, corners (at one of the facades they even turn into windows of a completely round shape), which serves to soften the rigid geometry of the buildings and makes them look very much like the good old punch cards. The theme found by the architects is both winsome and unobtrusive; it is more than appropriate in the buildings meant to showcase the achievements in the field of high-tech solutions.

The arch also survived into the new project, although, while it was a pass-through one and served the function of the entrance gate to the territory of “Expoforum”, now the characteristic parabolic shape was given to the marquee of the north entrance. It is perceived as a golden sail whose edges are drawn down to the ground, and the main canvas is spread out by the gusts of Saint Petersburg wind.

For the other facade, the architects also chose the golden amber color. According to Eugene Gerasimov, there were several reasons for the monochrome solution. First of all, the architects needed a more reserved tone, one that would “pull” together the composition of various volumes, and at the same time one that would not leave a “mottled” or “overcrowded” impression. Second of all, this very tone was the perfect choice for adding some “flavor” of Saint Petersburg’s classical architecture into the image of the new complex – the photos of its most famous buildings will be photo-printed on the ceramic panels of the expo halls’ facades.

In fact, the whole facade will turn into a giant canvas that is broken by slightly-less-transparent verticals of the galleries and overpasses into separate segments, each of which displays a theme of its own. One can see the Bronze Horseman, the Palace Bridge, and the Arch of the Joint Staff in here – when viewed from the road, the pictures will change like the frames of a movie, or rather, and this comparison will be even more appropriate for Saint Petersburg, canvases in an art museum. The museum association is enhanced by the color of the coating that the architects chose – it really looks like a golden frame of some work of art, but then again, the pictures that are there on the ceramic panels get the hew of an opaque sepia that we often see on the old photographs and in the old movies.

Text by: Anna Martovitskaya

The genius loci of this over-ground station is determined by its position directly at the river Elbe, the future dense urban development and, not least, by the historic Elbbrücken bridges with their conspicuous shallow steel arches. In resonance to the bridges, an impressive steel structure consisting of curved steel girders supports the new station, creating a structure which newly interprets the dynamic design principles of the historic bridges.

The external roof construction underscores the visual presence of the structure; the crosswise layout of the frames results in a grid-type system and stabilises the steel arches. A glass façade suspended on the inside protects the building against the weather. The light-flooded station opens interesting vistas towards the local urban ‚Am Baakenhafen’ center, to the prominent tower blocks and the Elbe bridges. The design is characterised by simple and clearly structured access principles. The complex difference in levels between the terrain and the platforms is cleverly dealt with inside the building. A ribbon section for lights and media will stretch the entire length of the station between the platform level and the booking hall. The lighting will generally be subdued and unostentatious, underscoring the character of the structure.

The site is characterised, on the south and west side, by a homogeneous low-rise urban texture. To the north side, the site faces a long and narrow urban park which is stretched along a major circulatory artery. On the north side of the main road, high-rise housing block are distributed along the circulatory axis.
On a urban level, one of the challenges of the project was to reconnect the diverse building scales existing in the surroundings area while providing the local community with an eye-catching, friendly integrated new public library.

The library

Moving away from the standardised homogeneity of the surrounding built environment, the design of the new library establishes a subtle resonance with the pre-existing urban texture. The articulation of its volumes, the proportions and its height establish a critical and yet interesting dialogue with the surrounding buildings in the attempt to reconnect the chaotic nature of the site within one coherent synthetic gesture. The entire mass of the new library is split into four distinctive volumes of approximately the same footprint of the adjacent low-rise urban plots.

This organisation offers a clear visual and volumetric connection with the scale of the adjacent building and provides a welcoming and inclusive new structure for the local community.
These four bodies are distinct and separate at ground floor where an inclusive public space is articulated as an extension of the local public garden. The main lobby of the building is located at level +3. At this level the lobby is wrapped by a stretching surface connecting the four bodies of the building and forming a gently curved roof structure. From the lobby space a spiralling circulation serves the different areas of the building while visually connecting the various spaces located at the four corner of the structure. The internal spiral organisation facilitates the navigation throughout the building and provides spectacular views between levels. The different functions of the building, while connected with the spiralling circulatory ramp, are placed at the four corner of the building in correspondence with the free standing volumes: there a more intimate and quite space provides the ideal set for reading and studying.

Landscape

One of the main features of the project is the organisation of the ground level as the natural continuation of the adjacent public park. By splitting the library in four volumes -which are then reconnected at the level of the lobby- the ground floor is freed and kept public as an extension of the urban scape. By doing so, the building offers at the level of the street a welcoming public space for the community to interact with the building while not necessarily using its facilities. This sheltered space underneath the main lobby of the library can be used in multiple way by the local community: as a space for gathering and interplay.

Programme

At the ground floor the building is slip into four main core volumes. This subdivision allow for the public use of the space below the main lobby for informal gathering and for (cultural and recreational) activities to take place.
In this area the four volumes host respectively: the main access lobby where the main reception, administration offices and information point is located; the children corner which take advantage of this location to access to and accessed from the external public garden; the plant room to ease external access. At level +3 is located the main lobby space, the periodicals room, local data and children room at level. From here a spiralling circulatory ramp serves the various areas of the library. The ramp revolves around a main empty atrium allowing for a simple visual navigation throughout the building and its functional areas. Following the ramp onwards, the following areas unfold: the preservation room at level +4; the reading room, the digital room at level +5; humanities, society and linguistic room at level +5, +6 and +7; the exhibition and lecture room at level + 8.

Structure & Cladding

The building is formed by four free standing independent volumes which are connected at level +3 by a spanning slab. The main structure of the four volumes is made of reinforced concrete frame from the ground level to the lobby level. From level +3 onwards the exterior structure is designed as a light weight steel diagrid tied back to the concrete core by the steel slabs.
The cladding is made by thin steel fins that follow the geometry of the pods by drawing the contours of their very geometry.
This organisation of the cladding provides shadowing to the interior space while allowing effective filter to the passage of natural light.

Every major areas are set along its axis distinguishing social from intimancy areas, considering visual relations to specific outdoor highlights and their own nature. While constraining the limits to perceive the outdoors, space and form are drawn to an overall balance, ordering scale and contextualizing openings. The multi-oriented form is then pressed against the terrain slope aligned to the street above. From the street point of view, long and linear façades provides a strong relation to the urban structure.

Because the terrain is located in a slope, the rooftops are perceived in a similar way to an elevation. At the interior garden, the terrain is raised to a form of plain common ground level. The exterior pavement replicating the zig-zagged shape, the pool as well the walls and vegetation, locks down the geometry into a cohesive habitat.

The biggest problem to be encountered here is precisely the difference in height between the levels of main square and that of the existing entrance to the central market, which measures roughly one floor. To overcome it, pedestrians have to make a large detour, which adds considerable distance to their route.

The backbone of the new central market is formed by the covered Market Street, which lies on the level of main city square and connects the two spots closest to it on both access streets. The programme of the new central market is thus divided into two floors, one on the level of main square and the other on the level of Florjanov Square on the other side of the city block. The lower floor is partially dug in and features indoor trading and service surfaces, while the upper floor is intended for the covered market and opens to all sides. Since the level of the new covered street is level with main square, it is possible to connect the two in the future by means of the programme within the city block. By establishing the connection through the arcade on the ground floor, the currently neglected and poorly accessible basement surfaces inside the city block become interesting for public or commercial programme.

Above the terrain, the uniform building volume terminates the city block. In doing so, it also clearly delineates the edge of Florjanov Square, thus restoring its former character. The curved longer side of the new building connects the spatially shifted lines of the surrounding buildings in a simple manner. At the same time, its arching enables the widening of the existing bottleneck and an unobstructed flow of traffic across the square. The building elements reference the immediate surroundings – the roof is multi-gabled, and the facade is designed with arched elements whose design ties the new building together with the layout of main city square. With such a facade in the direction of Florjanov Square, the market functions as a town loggia and, together with the square, forms a distinctive new city space.

The arch, which is transferred from the facade also to the interior, acts also as the main construction element; its slender construction enables the rational creation of a singular covered space and at the same time produces an interesting interplay of light and shadows on the interior surfaces. Since the spaces are not heated, the construction of the surface part of the building is as simplified as possible. The walls are made of monolithic polished and impregnated concrete, which ensures bearing capacity and protection against humidity and precipitation in a single layer.

Even though the square is divided by traffic, the design of the square is treated as a unit. There are circular multi-purpose urban elements placed on either side of the road. Each element consists of a curved concrete bench, an eccentrically placed tree offering shade and protection against the elements, and a paved inner space. Unlike the whole surface of the square, which is slightly tilted, the latter space is horizontal. Most of the time, these urban islands are intended for socialising and hanging around; on market days, however, they are used for open-air trading. The square’s surface being inclined, they can also serve as an amphitheatre for the audience attending events taking place in front of the market’s picturesque facade.