CITADEL
residential
project detail
Košice or in fact a site above Košice city. A prominent place. A bill from which the centre can be seen as well as the mountains on the horizon. A place to which you climb from the city as if to Acropolis. The near amphitheatre completes the antique-like context. The neighbouring hospital complex has taken its toll on this site and has ripped it out of the urban context of the city. How to build on this unique and yet burdened place? It is necessary to maximize the benefit of the privileged location and at the same time to suppress the dominance of the hospital – to
create its urban counterweight. A unique site needs to be addressed with a unique concept. The design was inspired by a citadel.
An elevated place above the city providing refuge; a micro-world with its own parameters, a town within a town. The archetype of a citadel accentuates the border of the inner and outer world. Towards the outside it is firm while it is articulated on the inside. Always purposeful and rational. We have tried to make a sort of citadel above Košice. A solid, dignified, baroque-like fortification growing from the landscape. Its compact horizontal form counterbalances the vertical line of the hospital. From the surrounding anonymous space it is possible to enter (through citadel gates) the semi-private atriums lined with the commercial ground floor or the filter of private front yards. From atriums it is possible to access the individual vertical traffic junctions of the house. The concept of the transition from the anonymous via the semi-private to the private areas creates socially structured environment preconditioned for building of communities. It has a potential for naturally self-controlled safety. The areas of individual atriums have rather modest scale. They reduce the feeling of massive repetition; they allow seeing only a part of the large unit. At the same time they allow easy memorisation and finding one’s bearings. They are as if woven out of the ceiling panel lines which flow among individual atriums in the ground floor area and on top floors. Southern sides of the atriums are intentionally lowered so that they support the access of sun to the inner space. As far as the atriums the facades have the character of open screen walls breaking in and creating generous loggias. On external facades the stylization resembles a brick-wall baroque fortress. The significant mark of the citadel is the presence of hexagonal modulation. This modulation permeates the project from the form of the whole structure down to the layouts of individual rooms – into modulation. Hexagons provide more variable space for furnishing of bedrooms, living rooms and dining rooms with kitchenettes. The main residential area has the living and dining part separated; each bedroom is large
enough to allow various positions of the bed and large inbuilt wardrobes. The atypical shape of the room makes the interior attractive even without expensive interior adjustments. Due to the hexagonal modulation, each flat has an attractive corner position. All flats are provided with terraces allowing outdoor dining. The shape design contributes to the differentiation of the offered flats from common housing standard. Above all though, the hexagonal atriums solve the issue of insolation of all flats. The hexagonal modulation thus optimally affects even the structural system. Due to the modulation we have managed to solve the ever present problem of apartment houses, i.e. synchronization of residential and parking modulation in floors arranged on top of each other. The hexagonal modulation helped to fulfil our ambition to achieve an extraordinary effect using ordinary means. In principle this is the application of a low-storeyed three-bay apartment house with one underground parking floor.