Structure studio KWK Promes has transformed a slaughterhouse within the Czech Republic into Plato Modern Artwork Gallery, with exhibition areas lined with rotating concrete partitions.
Positioned in Ostrava, the unique heritage-protected slaughterhouse constructing dates again to the nineteenth century, however after a long time of disuse, it had grow to be dilapidated and partially collapsed.
Tasked with adapting the construction into an artwork gallery, KWK Promes added an extension and concrete infills that distinction the present sooty brickwork however mimic its ornamentation.
These additions embody six massive rotating partitions, three of which give entry to Plato Modern Artwork Gallery and three that enable its exhibition areas to be opened to the environment.
“We launched an answer that makes artwork extra democratic,” defined the studio.
“The principle thought of the mission relies on preserving the performance of the openings as shortcuts connecting the constructing to town,” it added. “This has supplied artists and curators with solely new exhibition potentialities and permits artwork to actually ‘exit’ into the area across the constructing.”
Plato Modern Artwork Gallery’s rotating partitions create two entrances on both aspect of the constructing, main right into a central reception, ticket workplace and cafe space.
The 4 exhibition halls every sit on the bottom flooring across the edges of the constructing, permitting them to learn from pure gentle and a connection to the encircling park.
A newly constructed wing on the constructing’s southern finish accommodates a further exhibition corridor with places of work above, completed externally with a blind concrete facade adorned with the impressions of home windows, sills and lintels.
On the primary flooring, this wing connects to a small group of rooms for visiting visitors and an area for the gallery’s instructional programme.
Whereas the unique brickwork has been left seen internally within the circulation areas, the galleries have been reinsulated and lined with lime plaster, with deep reveals created for the constructing’s quite a few small arched home windows.
“The deteriorated bricks have been largely replenished with these recovered from a collapsed part of the constructing, [and] the brand new glazing has a ceramic display screen print, making it seem darkish and uninteresting, attenuating the sunshine within the galleries.”
Surrounding Plato Modern Artwork Gallery, KWK Promes landscaped a park with timber, flower meadows and a small pool of water, with a gravel terrace across the gallery connecting to a collection of paths.
“Initially, we imagined a paved floor for inventive actions, however as we bought to know Ostrava higher, we realised that the place was extra in want of engaging inexperienced area for residents,” defined the studio.
“The contaminated soil there was rehabilitated and changed by a biodiverse park with water-permeable flooring, flower meadows and with retention basins.”
KWK Promes is a Polish structure studio based in Katowice in 1999 by Robert Konieczny and Marlena Wolnik. Its different latest tasks embody the white-concrete Home on the Highway and Quadrant Home, which encompasses a rotating residing area.
Plato Modern Artwork Gallery was lately named one in all seven finalists on this 12 months’s Mies van der Rohe Award for Europe’s finest new constructing.
