karlov office building

From the three houses in the south front of the block bypassed by the Prague north-south speedway in both directions, the investor’s brief regarded two of them plus the adjacent miniature plot across the B. Němcové street. The plot is located exactly on the axis of the block and the bridge where a Metro tube runs in the middle. For us, those alternatives positioning a solitaire object – preferably a house-sculpture – on this mini-site were the true winners preserving the regulation of the block behind founded at the end of the 19th century at the same time. Our “dragonfly” really has a pair of symmetrical transparent half-open wings; and even more, in its irregular netted structure of the curtain wall façade’s bearing structure, it works with a tectonics derived from structural lines of forces of insect wings. The pair of jutted masses inclining outside is, among others, a result of the fact that the building rests astride on the Metro tube; moreover, this design maximises the area of the daylighted floor plan. Any building on this place is perceived most strongly when approached on the way to the city centre along Nuselský most (bridge) – and this is where the symmetry of the volumetric design (rarely used by us) comes from, among others. We always felt that some light dynamics and night perception of this way exposed individual building is very important at this place. We designed an abstract kinetic picture varying with light slowly vertically moving along the entire perimeter of the strip. And what about the remaining block? We stuck to renovation and preservation of the corner house and proposed replacing the central building from the 1970s when the Metro had been built by a new structure. We worked with a motive of a curtain wall – a transparent metal moulded carpet. A carpet that would become a pavement and a road, a rug, a tongue the city stuck out, onto which a dragonfly would gently land.