EDU LOPEZ ARCHITECTS
Správa železnic Headquarters.
Location: Prague, Czech Republic.
Date: Oct 2020 - Feb 2021
Typology: Culture, Landscape
Size: 51.660 sqm
Status: International Competition
Client: Správa železnic, Railway administration.
Collaborators:
The new building will found inside a urban intervention more large that extends to the Public ambit.
The place as a starting point, its extreme conditions of urban and regulatory situation will be responsible for establishing a formal and functional response to the project of the new headquarters. We establish these conditions to put them in value and that they are not an impediment, being responsible for the volumetric proposal, focusing on a homogeneous context between the two buildings. A fast and precise, uniform, heterogeneous, dialoguing and contextualized response is given which subjects the city to a complete transformation, putting in value the area where it is implanted.
Connectivity is one of the most notable purposes of the project, connectivity between users and citizens, giving a clear and direct answer: creating a homology between the two proposed buildings creating a building unit, but at the same time it must be broken into “micro buildings” to contextualize the urban environment, in such a way that the two proposed buildings can have the same decisive language in the face of this Urban and functional situation.
Exterior view
One of the major drawbacks is the obligatory step that must be left for the buses to circulate to the station. What has been done is to value this situation and take advantage of its spatial geometry to generate both the plan layout, the section and the elevation. We want this step to be seen, and not only to be seen, but to be an organizational element, therefore, we implement it in the project as an ascending linear crack that modulates and fragments the building, in such a way that it generates the structure of the building itself from porticoes that solve the structural situation of the access road to the station. An asymmetrical rhythm is created, accentuated by the structure and that divides the building into two clearly differentiated parts. The lower part of a more stony material accommodates the areas that are intended for the offices while the upper part of the building, it radically changes its materiality by housing independent but continuous modules inside to house the office spaces.
Exterior view
But the question posed to us is what to do with the second building? Should it have the same language? Should it be differentiated? Or simply shouldn’t it exist?
Our answer is clear and direct: we must create a homology between the two buildings and make this transport gap a virtue and use it as a compositional and spatial planning “weapon”. Given this, what we did is simply create the same situation symmetrically with respect to the main building. Another crack appears, but in this case not as a road with rolling ground, but rather as a road with pedestrian ground, creating terraces that enhance the urban situation, establishing an immediate and homogeneous dialogue between the two buildings.
Interior view
Interior view
Interior view
But ... What was happening with the more urban facade? Well, precisely that, which should be different from the other facade and should be more urban. For this we act in a very direct but complex way at the same time. We wanted two different but equal buildings that respond to the same compositional language and that at the same time form independent but united fractions. The challenge is not easy, but we approach it in a very unique way: creating the emptying of each other. In other words, one building is the negative part of the other, in such a way that if we were to unite the two buildings, they would overlap perfectly, forming a volumetric unit. Where, in one building, there is a projecting volume, in the other building, this volume is a hole and so on.
Aerial view