Laur

The building on Laurinská Street is located in the historic center of Bratislava, in the pedestrian zone, nestled between historic buildings. With its open layout across eight floors, it has in the past provided space for several institutions. The building retained its architectural character until 2020, when it required technical and technological renovation, as well as a contemporary visual “facelift” of the façade, taking into account its original aesthetic qualities and the preservation of its mass.

The correct approach to the design of the reconstruction was key for us from the beginning.The chosen solution for the reconstruction of the facades and interior load-bearing structures of the building preserves its architectural essence as designed by the architect Štefan Ďurkovič. The design process required an understanding of the logic of the original structure and its beauty. The building has eight floors, with side masonry structures extending up to the ninth floor. The roof is flat and walkable. The ground floor is open to the street. The building has no underground levels. Its position is slightly recessed from the street line, creating a kind of “bay” that serves as a seating area for the establishment on the ground floor.

The open floors on a subtle steel structure allow for maximum variation in the floor plan, with sanitary cores and staircases located at the extremes. We fully respected the alignment of the façade grid and the support system and only slightly modified the façade to the new form by removing the horizontal panels of the original balcony opening doors. This step opened the house more to the street and it becomes a kind of backdrop to the busy Laurinska Street through glazing complemented by narrow ventilation slits. The last two floors were connected into one hall for the needs of future tenants, which added a whole new dimension to the possibilities of using the building, as well as the use of the roof plane for a lounge bar. The final addition in the process was the addition of a reversible conservatory in the building’s parterre, which aligns the street line and also transfers the façade module in the form of subtle ribs to the street.