The unspoiled area of Łódź – it is in such a location that ‘RE: HOUSE IN THE ROCK’, a house designed by Marcin Tomaszewski from REFORM Architekt studio, will be built. This futuristic building will be built on a plot of land with a hill, against the background of unusual natural circumstances.
The history of the project dates back to December 2011 when Ericpol, one of Poland’s largest ICT companies, purchased a derelict plot in the centre of Lodz at the junction of Sienkiewicza street and Tymienieckiego street. It used to be the site of the Olimpia swimming pool, popular in communist times, which had fallen further and further into disrepair over recent decades.
Fabryczna offices is a grand addition to the existing city centre of Łódź and fits well with the entire masterplan for the areas around the new station. It connects past to present, with the design ambition for a distinct envelope given the strict instructions for a 4-storey plinth, respecting the outline of the plot and at the same time, allowing for a tower height of up to 60 meters. The depth of the plot encouraged the creation of a publicly accessible courtyard. The plinth, therefore, is a band of commercial spaces on the ground floor with offices above and a depth that allows for maximum daylight onto all levels. The rounded plinth and tower are curved to create a series of smaller volumes which makes the project more human scale and also provides a more individual identity to future tenants. The courtyard has an opening towards the culture centre and a passage towards Kilinskiego Street with the intention to introduce a new walking route through the area with retail in the courtyard.
Design MVRDV: Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries
Design Team: Nathalie de Vries, Fokke Moerel with Roy Sieljes, Mateusz Wojcieszek, Natalia Lipczuk, Philipp Kramer, Christine Sohar, Ole Egebaek, Brygida Zawadzka and Patryk Ślusarski
Partners:
Façade consultants: Essox façade
Advisory: WSP
Landscape Design: Lola Landscape Architects Rotterdam and Gress real estate services
The follower was realized on Łódź Design Festival 2015. The festival was founded in 2007, it has served from the very beginning as a review of Polish design achievements. Since its founding, the Festival has attracted more than 270,000 attendees from around the world.
Tobaco Hotel is located in the centre of Łódź, among historic tenement houses and old factory buildings. The hotel is part of the historic factory building complex. Since 1895, Karol Kretschmer had operated a wool textile factory there. In 1932, the National Cigarette Factory opened on the former textile factory premises. Nowadays, the whole building complex has been modernised and adapted to housing and hotel purposes.
It is house whose elevation has been made entirely of a plastic insulating material -Thermopian. Usually, this material has been used only for roofing. Thermopian has good thermal, acoustic and insulating properties and it can have any required colour.
Idea: The city of Łódź located in the centre of Poland is one of three biggest cities in the country. Before the II World War a highly prospering city with lots of industries, now is troubled with poverty and social problems. Although it has high aspirations to be a cultural oriented city of artist and students. Aiming to be a design, fashion and film capital of the country, it acquires the concern from many great architects and artists who are willing to create concept designs for a delayed rebirth of the city i.e.: Daniel Libeskind, Frank Ghery, David Lynch to name a few.
Architect: xm3
Name of Project: zmianatematu
Location: Łódź, Poland
Project team: Maciej Kurkowski, Julian Nieciecki, Mateusz Wójcicki