PROJECT REPORT: TRANSPORT FACILITIES & PUBLIC REALM
be the main practical obstacle. After approaching the city with sketches of a scheme to then find it wasn’t owned by them, they found the private owner, who “explained that his business isn’t producing enough income.” However, says Chybik: “This answer
wasn’t good enough,” so in 2012 the architects took to social media, posting “very simple renderings” on Facebook to promote their vision to the public. “The role of an architect in our generation is more than sketches and documentation – it’s about trying to diagnose the problem.” He says that despite the increased pressure being put on the client, during what Chybik calls the “first round of negotiations,” they were “trying not to see what was there.” However after “around five years of discussions” they eventually commissioned the practice, and “started to be very active, and friendly.” When a functional brief eventually arrived, the client specified little more than the number of buses that needed to be accommodated, and a new entrance hall plus other normal functions such as a ticket office. Ondrej says, “The scale of the transformation was pretty much in our hands.” The practice “opened a dialogue between the city and owner, as the moderator,” which “led to the municipality understanding the problem.” With the client struggling to fund the scheme, a stroke of “coincidence or luck,” saw the EU offer grants of up to 70% to improve central European public transportation hubs. “The owner was able to put in the 30%, the maximum they could afford,” says Chybik. The total project cost was 100 m Koruna (around £3.3m).
Return on investment for the designers
wasn’t the priority, despite the time they had committed to getting the scheme off the ground – and the fact the practice had been working for free. “Our major motivation wasn’t income, but was to make people not ashamed to use the bus,” says Ondrej.
Design approach
The architects’ key goal (including that of project architect Ondřej Švancara) was to reveal and highlight the fabric, and celebrate its strengths. “You have to try and understand the approach of the previous author, and try to read the strongest part of the piece, and reflect on it in your approach, and not go against their initial ideas.” He adds an interesting and perhaps counter-intuitive aside: “If you follow their original context, you’re free.”
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Although the designers were in any case required to preserve the major parts of the original building for structural reasons, and what heritage protection existed, this was also their goal based on principle, because “the buildings of great architects are able to work for 200 years.” The extent of the actual physical design moves belie the long- term value to the city of the restoration. Instead the project is “focused on retaining the essential traits of the building’s image, but with subtle renewal,” say the architects. The core design move was repainting and lighting the white roof structure – “the strongest thing on the entire building.” This enhanced a feeling of “weightlessness” given by the beams overhead, say the architects, and drew an even stronger contrast with the heaviness of the mass above. In so doing, the architects managed to avoid adding other lighting infrastructure to the platforms below, which would have been “more obstacles” in the way of its mission to strip clutter out. The programmable LEDs installed within the roof are enough to give generous light to the platforms, augmented by an existing roof light running the full length of the building, front to back. Following the same route, is a central pedestrian ‘spine’ created by the architects, and this bisects another lateral route near the front of the building, creating a ‘crossroads,’ plus an additional one near the back. The designers inserted a new, glazed entrance hall building leading straight through to the spine, providing not only a “very logical connection, but also connecting back to the city,” says the architect.
The new entrance building is roofed in red-coated concrete tiles to reference Brno bricks, and curves downwards at its flanks,
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The role of an architect in our generation is more than doing the sketches and documentation – it’s more trying to diagnose the problem
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