ostravica textilia

Mine of culture…

The project was designed with the knowledge that we are not “building” a new house, but we are trying to create a viable and attractive organism in two already existing houses, which each come from a different period and have different faces. Therefore, our main goal was to comprehensively organize the internal operation and space. Two important features of the house are based on this target – its opening to the public and the possibility of renting private and separate areas. The opening is achieved not only by a significant connection of the ground floor with the surrounding public space, but also by the fact that a large part of the house will be accessible to the public under normal operating conditions. To create private parts, we used zoning and hierarchy of rooms so as not to disrupt the transparency and openness of the premises.

The project seeks to achieve two goals at the same time. Affect the character of the houses as little as possible and create a wide range of places for various activities from concerts and lectures through a fitness center, gallery, restaurant, accommodation and retail space, to coworking, offices and workshops.

The division of the space around the atrium in building B is designed to preserve its openness and natural beauty as much as possible. For this reason, we decided not to divide the space with fixed partitions, but to keep its freedom by placing individual, free-standing “boxes” made of translucent polycarbonate.

We conceived the interiors in the style of preserving the current devastated state only with the necessary static and construction modifications. The walls will remain brick, the ceilings made of load-bearing steel elements with trapezoidal sheet metal will be left without a soffit with uncovered wiring and installations. The intention of the desing was honest content that speaks for its past and does not pretending to be anything else. At the same time, it creates a modern, pleasant environment and is a solid background for “culturally creative” events.

Although the houses inside work as an interconnected whole, we decided not to subordinate one house to the other and not to try to forcibly give them a unified character. Our approach is based on respect for the fact that each of them is different.

The competition, which we participated in October 2019, came quite unexpectedly. While standing in front of the faculty of architecture, having a cigarette, Juraj told me about a competition that will take place in the Cooltour Ostrava cultural center, that his boss is working on it and that he is looking for at least one more four-member team from Prague. After a little moment of hesitation, I wrote to Anička, Tomáš and Štěpán if they have the time and desire to try something like that….they did.

The whole competition was quite well organized, two teams from Prague and four teams from Ostrava. The purpouse was to offer to the owner of the historic building of the Ostravica-Textilia shopping house various solutions for a new cultural and creative center. Such a classic – when someone wants to do something nice and good looking, but doesn’t want to spend much money – how to legitimize it in the best way? Participation! You just give a few thousand crounds to some students who want to show up and then you let them sign a contract that you can do whatever you want with the proposal. Such as centralgroup competitions, etc. But of course it was great! A tour around a beautiful, dilapidated house (we had it available all the time during the workshop!), Accommodation in Stodolní in a luxury hotel, awesome breakfasts, lunch and alcohol included – one immediately thinks differently about the approach to work with a historic building, about the purpose and meaning of the “cultural-creative” center in general, about the economics of space, the ratio of public and leasable spaces, about zoning and addition in a historical context,…