In 2015 the City Council of Rzeszów, a city located in the southeast of Poland and capital of the Podkarpackie region, called a public competition for private investment to build a hybrid building in its historic centre, a sensitive location just a few metres from the Main Square and on a site adjacent to what is known as Pottery Square.
Authors: EOVASTUDIO + BAKPAK ARCHITECTS
Area: 17 000m2
Project year: 2019
Location: RZESZÓW, POLAND
Consultants: CEGROUP, GSBK BIURO KONSTRUKCYJNE, ARCHIGROUP
Photography Credits: BRICK VISUAL
Other credits: FIRST PRIZE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
MULTIFUNCIONAL BUILDING. Rzeszów. Polonia
This space owes its name to the traditional ceramic market that was held precisely in this location, an urban void generated by the bifurcation of the old riverbed that crossed this particular point of the city. The competition plot consisted of a hexagonal surface with sides parallel to the converging blocks, the main front of which will once again configure this place of memories.
The project is built on the duality between present and past, present represented in the exterior envelope that reproduces the lines of the site and the materials of it´s surroundings, and the past recovered through the evocation of local traditions in the heart of the building.
This contrast is represented by the solid, polygonal density of its façade and the dynamic lightness of the interior void, whose curvilinear generatrix with a conical section and the use of glazed ceramics in fresh, luminous colours aim to transform this turned space into a catalyst for lost images and activities.
The hybrid programme is distributed by superimposing horizontal layers of different uses, starting with the parking and commercial areas in the underground levels, and freeing up the ground level as a public square crossed by covered passages, galleries and lobbies. On the first and second floors, a fully equipped hotel is developed around the courtyard that perforates the building, while from the third floor onwards different residential typologies are superimposed by category, combining small dwellings with corridor access with more complex units with terraces, crossed ventilation, sunlight from various orientations and different formats of enclosures and openings.
This programmatic range is reflected in the volume through the ascending sponging of the building, beginning as a compact and continuous element that progressively slopes and fragments, multiplying the envelope but reducing its scale externally in order to meet the different requirements of the investor, but at the same time seeking the benefit of the space we share.