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Commercial Buildings

Porta Varsovia

Description

Porta Varsovia is an exceptional project created in cooperation between spółka artystyczna mirek i ostrowski and the Kontrapunkt V-Project Investment Team. The project consists of two high-rise buildings to be erected in the centre of Warsaw and they will be one the tallest facilities in the city.

To the order of the Management Board of Assets of the Capital City of Warsaw, the authors of the design, Aleksander Mirek and Piotr Ostrowski, prepared a spatial programme concept covering not only the presentation of the planned buildings but focusing also on comprehensive management of the area of the future project.

Porta Varsovia is a complex of two buildings to be erected in the capital between Nowogrodzka, Wspólna and Emilii Plater streets. Their interesting architectural form is based on contrast between a black facade made of raw concrete and the glass structure of the remaining three walls of each building. The high-rises are rectangular and connected with each other by means of carbon fibre strands. The facade is “riddled”, the created openings refer to the history and symbolize traces of insurgent bullets, visible in the fence at the nearby Church of Saints Peter and Paul. The skyscrapers go up 52 storeys, but do not give the impression of being bulky or monumental; Port Varsovia is a symbolic gate, which is to blend together with the skyline, this is done, inter alia, by the dilution of floors accompanying the growth of the number of floors and the introduction of changes in the structure of the glass walls, from opacity to transparency. These instruments are used to emphasis simple elegance of both buildings.

The plot for the investment task is located in the very centre of Warsaw, in the direct vicinity of Mariott hotel and the Church of Saints Peter and Paul. Exceptional prestige of the location is additionally emphasised by the fact that the Lilium building authored by Zada Hadid is to be erected in the neighbourhood in the future.

Such location of the plot provoked the authors to create a concept of creating new space. The design is to underline the importance of the place in which the presence connects both the past and the future. The authors succeeded in separating a special space in the centre of a busy and noisy city that is a silent witness to historic events that took place in Warsaw.

Porta Varsovia Complex is a gate made up of two buildings, guiding the citizens of Warsaw from the world of the past symbolised by the Church of Saints Peter and Paul and the cemetery adjacent to it, to the world of the past represented in the Lilium Building. The authors consciously created a new surrealistic space in the tissue of the capital, the space where these two words clash. Porta Varsovia Buildings will set a viewing axis between Old and New Warsaw, and thereby they will be a complement to a dialogue between modernity and tradition. Not to disturb the pure and simple composition, Emilii Plater street will be rebuilt and hidden under the surface of the land (it will play a role both of the access road and an underground car park occupying nearly the entire space under the planned investment area). Thanks to this operation, the authors achieved an area for pedestrians only, facilitating the passage from the church of Saints Peter and Paul to Platinum Building, on which axis Porta Varsovia Buildings are located. Additionally, one of them will be imbedded in a basin so that each passer-by could without any problems admire the view opening before them. Lawns and green areas will be designed throughout the entire project area as to increase the sense of oasis in the chaos of the surrounding city. 

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