The investor planned to revitalise the area of the old PRIOR Martin department store while respecting the significance of the location and its close distance to the centre of Martin. The goal was to raze down the existing building except for the part of the basement with a public shelter and replace it with a new shopping mall fully meeting the modern concept of retail centre.
Together with the project, we also had to redesign the public space in front of the main entrance connected to the area of the renovated town centre. The project included redesigning of related pedestrian zones, the green in front of the main entrance or on Daxnerova (street), and walkways around the shopping centre within the whole area. We also designed the new traffic connection of the building and the relocation of parking areas on the 2nd floor on the roof of the new building.
Urbanistic concept
The planned building fills the block defined by Daxnerova, P. Mudroňa, Kohůtova (streets), and Náměstí SNP (square). There are listed historical buildings in the close vicinity – Župný dom (Turčianska galéria/gallery), the Church of St. Martin, and the Obchodná akadémia/Academy of Commerce. The location adjoins to the historical centre of Martin built according to the medieval street system. The structure of the development, the streetscape established a typical mosaic along the centre formed by M.R. Štefánika and 29. Augusta streets.
The central square in Martin underwent significant modifications in the past decade that contributed to a significant upgrading of the quality of the public space. The revitalisation of the area of the contemporary Obchodný dom Prior (Prior Shopping Centre) further upgrades the conditions for town life adding more modern qualities to it. A new major nodal point is established here, a downtown shopping centre offering excellent services and co-forming the desired density of relations between the administrative and cultural centres (theatre, own Hall) on the north side of the square, and its southern end.
The newly built Prior Martin shopping centre will allow customers and, in fact, also the daily life return to the centre again and prevent an important commercial function from moving to the outskirts shopping centres. The synergy that will attract residents into the centre of the town and make them use the services offered on the square is undoubtedly an indispensable contribution.
In our design, we took into consideration essential and substantial relations to the context, and that is particularly the circulation of persons, main traffic routes, and, last but not least, the mass and spatial arrangement of the surroundings and the urban environment. The design goal is to facilitate a connection between the area in front of the St. Martin Church and the central square. The position of the eastern edge of the building intentionally continues the street front of the houses positioned more to the north on the square; Župný dom (house) as a remarkable solitary object is accentuated this way.
The renovation of the public area linked to the shopping centre follows the already completed renovation of a part of the pedestrian zone in the historical centre. The design complies with the town concept extending it by another section of a renovated pedestrian zone and contributing to the revitalisation of the urban space in this location.
Architecture
Ever since the first sketches, we thought about and took into consideration the context of surrounding buildings, and that is not just in their current form, but also with the view of the assumed future development of the entire space of the historical centre of Martin. The goal was establishing a genuine dialogue between the historical centre and the planned building that by its unambiguous form ad function complements the entire public space. The proposed design of the building responds to the form of the square and supports the vertical line of the St. Martin Church.
The core motive of the architectural design was the effort, and that is primarily through its mass. Although the building is a unique element in the city centre by its dimensions, the designed roofscape uses a scale and order corresponding with the surrounding historic buildings.
The starting point for the building’s volumetric design is the place with its scenery of surrounding mountain peaks on the one hand, and the historic, and also perhaps even popularised architectural principles used in this region for town and country houses, be it either the scale of a building, the roof shape, the structure of facade elements, or the method of working with any specific material.
These specified motives and principles are transformed into modern means of expression while using modern materials.
The building’sheight and the height of the ridges and crown cornices corresponds with the surroundings; the moulding of facades refers to a classical structure of town buildings with gables and cornices oriented into the public space; the streetscape directly follows the surrounding development in the town centre; the designed hip roofs by their proportions, falls, and direction of ridges respect design rules in the given place.
The building is well distinguishable and perceivable as one whole, but its mass is finely articulated and adapted to the scale of the surrounding buildings. It is partly wrapped in a semi-translucent veil of a steel exterior lamella facade set in front of the outer wall structure. The wall structures, either plastered or glazed, can be seen through this envelope. An exciting and visually variable and playful game between different layers of the envelope is created this way. The exterior lamellas are in one tone of colour, of different sizes and density. This arrangement unifies the appearance of the whole object, but, at the same time, the building is finely articulated with details adjusted to the local scale.
The roof over the parking lot on the 2nd floor consists of simple hip roofs cut through by lines of glass skylights above light wells and entries into the passage. A flat-roofed cube containing technologies penetrates the hip roof at two places. Outer walls run to the roof ridges at several positions, but somewhere, the facade ends with a flat parapet on the floor or handrail level and the roofs then visually levitate above the fixed structure of the building.
The roofscape is designed covered with profiled/trapezium metal sheets. The raster and profile of sheets match the raster of facade lamellas set in front of the facade; the scale of individual elements of street planes corresponds with the urban character and the scale of the surrounding buildings.
