Multi-functional House Cauliflower

The investor's intention, who already realized a multifunctional building at Míru Square in Zlín together with the New Work studio, was to construct a contemporary urban palace that would include, in addition to commercial and administrative spaces, also residential areas, a café, and a fitness center. The investor organized an invited competition and chose the proposal from New Work out of five submissions. The architect himself admits that the initial competition design did not handle the challenging plot, on which the basement of an unfinished building already stood, very well. The realized outcome returned to the first sketch, which the architects had abandoned in favor of a different solution for the competition. The construction project was developed by the design office GG ARCHICO from Uherské Hradiště.
The multifunctional building is located in a heterogeneous urban development, and the main task of the architects was to respond to the surrounding context while maintaining a sovereign modern appearance for the building. Nearby is an eclectic building of a synagogue, which today serves as a city library, across the street stands a department store from the socialist era, and the new construction had to respect the scale of neighboring houses on Františkánská Street. The architect demonstrated sensitivity to surrounding architectural poles and successfully responded to all of them in the massing of the building.
On the ground floor of the palace, there is a passage connecting Hradební and Františkánská streets. It shortens the route from the bus station to the city center, and it can be expected that, like the other spaces in the building, it will be frequently visited by residents. Thus, the building integrates into its surroundings not only with its shape but also with its function. As if it had always belonged here.
In designing the façade, the architect was inspired by the shape language of the neighboring synagogue and transformed the curved decoration into undulations, thereby softening the scale of the building. The plastically undulating façade also captures sunlight on the northern side during the day and improves the brightness in the interior. The regular waves carry the genetic information of the corrugated sheet that had surrounded the plot for many years. Thanks to the chosen concept, the building appears confidently in the context of the surrounding city, yet conciliatory.
The play with the façade in Uherské Hradiště has a strong tradition in the history of architecture. The first promoter of the concept of separating the façade from the load-bearing structure of the building was Le Corbusier, whose 5 points of modern architecture still keep creators awake at night. The sculptural interpretation of the house's form also resembles this concept. However, in Uherské Hradiště, it was not possible to apply the classic Corbusian trick with a skeleton because the foundations of the unfinished building predetermined a different placement of columns than would have been optimal. For this reason, it was necessary to design a light shell that would still meet all contemporary technical parameters and hang it from the horizontal structures of the floors. Therefore, the building's façade is suspended from a steel structure, which has spatially freed up the commercial ground floor and allows for more efficient use or remodeling in the future.
The originally considered copilit or fully glazed façade turned out to be an odd solution, especially in terms of maintenance and aging of the building. At the same time, it did not respond to the surrounding context. The architect advocated for the use of Ytong aerated concrete blocks despite the initial mistrust of the construction company and the investor. Thanks to the solid material of the façade, the concept of a veil with right-angled aluminum windows became more prominent. The waves in Uherské Hradiště were cut to size directly on the construction site according to templates. The design took into account the manual processing of the blocks, and the wave radii repeat. Due to the precise fitting of the blocks, there are no thermal bridges on the façade, and the efficiency of the masonry and plastering is excellent. The final appearance of the façade was enhanced by small-format glass cladding, whose main task is to play with light nuances and reflect sunlight into the interior.