Bauwerk

Octopus habitat
Peter Sticzay-Gromski - Bratislava (SK) - 2007
Octopus habitat, Foto: Ľubo Stacho
Octopus habitat, Foto: Ľubo Stacho
In last decades of the previous century and even more markedly in the beginning of the actual millennium many works of architecture have been bringing along new forms, new means of expression and more ruptures with the old conventions, axioms of typologies and classical technologies of construction. It is mainly the star architects and the young generation that moves the limits in these aspects. To have an idea, however, is one thing, and to have it realized by the economically strong society and investors is another thing. Architecture is a good commodity. Architecture today more than ever sells and meets the architects´ visions. Bratislava is no exception, especially because it is rich in „brown fields“. The unmistakable Octopus housing complex by Peter Sticzay-Gromski and his team is one that fills this kind of localities with sense and vision. It may be compared in scale and quality of intervention to the modernist Avion built in the interwar period in Bratislava. Though Octopus is lacking the more favourable location in the urban structure. Dutch in character its architecture is anyway more than contemporary in the local context. Functionally it contains 160 apartments: more smaller ones with minimal floor area and less larger ones or duplex apartments. Their open plan is positive in flexibility, limiting in often underscored spatial comfort. This is precisely housing for younger generations. The otherness inscribed in design of individual flats as well as in the otherness as the main attribute of the whole volumetric composition of the housing complex cost some difficulties in flows of movements, in horizontal or vertical access to some apartments. While it probably does not have the ambition to impress the older or more conservative clients, this mega apartment house attracts without doubt by the scale of successful experimenting, unseen for decades in this city. Ivan Gürtler

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