Martin Shopping Gallery

Year2017

CategoryCivic Amenities, Retail

LocationMartin, Slovakia

StatusCompleted

The context of the historic centre of Martin and its future development was key to the design of the department store. The new building encloses the public space and enters into dialogue with the surrounding buildings through its scale, orientation and handling of mass. Its form responds to the shape of Martin’s main square and emphasises the vertical of St Martin’s Church, while the roofscape follows the rhythm of the pitched roofs, ridges and main cornices of the surrounding historic houses.

The building’s expression also draws on the character of the local landscape and the silhouette of the nearby mountains, whose peaks are echoed in the overall composition. Although the building is prominent in scale, its mass is finely articulated and the façades work with an abstraction of the classical composition of town houses.

The monochromatic whole is largely wrapped in a semi-transparent skin of metal louvres that softens its volume and adds a contemporary layer over the rendered concrete structure.

Client	OC Martin s.r.o.
Design team	Martin Krupauer Pavel Kvintus Michael Vojtěchovský

Mass and Relationship to the Surroundings

Although the building is exceptional in its dimensions, its roofscape works with the scale and formal language of the surrounding historic buildings. The starting point for its form and massing was the site itself, with the backdrop of the peaks of the nearby mountains, as well as local architectural principles. These influences are also reflected in the composition of the façade elements and the way materials are handled.

The height and orientation of the building, its pitched roofs, ridges and main cornices correspond with the surrounding buildings. The shaping of the façades is an abstraction of the classical composition of town houses.

Façade and Light

The monochromatic building reads as a single whole, yet its mass is finely articulated. It is largely wrapped in a semi-transparent veil of metal façade louvres set in front of the rendered concrete external walls.

The rendered and glazed walls show through this skin, creating a shifting play of light between the individual layers. The louvres are white but vary in width and spacing. The roof is clad in white trapezoidal metal sheeting with profiles of varying width.