Apartment Block Nové Lauby

The site (used for decades as a car park) is located in the city of Ostrava’s medieval centre. It sits in close proximity to the main Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Square and the Old Town Hall. A compact, standalone structure, the Nové Lauby block naturally rehabilitates the memory of the locale and its historical street system. The housing complex integrates a quiet courtyard on the ground floor. Constructed above a three-story-deep underground car park, the block has been designed in strict accordance with its surrounding context. The aim was to maintain the scale and local consistency of the dimensions and to ensure that the finished building harmonised with its surroundings. The subdivision of the block is also based on the context and scale of the location. The silhouettes, textures and colours evoke division into smaller, traditional-style townhouses. Simultaneously, however, the building retains the unifying characteristics of a small apartment block in its overall proportions and scale. Given the scale of the surrounding buildings, the block is externally formed of eight volumes: four corner volumes and four intermediate volumes. For economical reasons, however, it is functionally composed of five separate vertical cores. The commercial parterre on Velká Street uses an arched segment to reference the history of the building’s location – a Lauby (i.e., an arcade). The building’s parterre retreats, extending Velká Street into a pedestrian zone. Visually, it clearly follows the existing arcade of the Old Town Hall. The roofs have been designed to be flat, residential and accumulative, combining intensive and extensive greenery.