Čakovec Science Centre
Competition design for the Science Centre within the space of the former army barracks of the city of Čakovec.
A hovering roof amidst greenery
As one of the most important elements of the building’s recognisability is the air tower, it was conceptually essential that it remains visible within the design from all directions as an integral part of the building and a kind of spatial landmark, and from the inside right from the moment of entering the plot and moving through the entire interior.
The scope of the project is located in the wider zone on the very eastern edge of the town of Čakovec, in the space of the former town barracks. In terms of content, the zone is planned as an innovation and entrepreneurship space that offers a logical continuation of the development and regeneration of an existing urban resource easily accessible from other surrounding towns, offering new attractive, contemporary facilities that will inevitably serve new generations.
The zone of the planned intervention touches the very south of the educational space and is tightly squeezed north of the service section of a shopping centre. On the large green area east of the site, behind the railway line, an educational park with STEM facilities in the fields of nature and biology is planned, and a future connection of these contents via a link under the railway line is planned for the future. Given these parameters, the urban layout of the plot itself implies that the subject building should be a link between these facilities, visible and formally recognisable, and represent a kind of marker within the STEM and entrepreneurship zone.
In order to accommodate the prescribed programme of greenery and enclosed space onto the location, the footprint of the building is increased, occupying almost the entire buildable area, programmatically mostly placed on the first floor where it freely levitates, resting on a smaller ground-floor volume. Halting and directing movement into the building was achieved by forming an L-shaped volume on the ground floor, additionally blockading the unfavourable views towards the HGSS (Croatian Mountain Rescue Service) building and the service side of the shopping centre.
As one of the most important elements of the building’s recognisability is the air tower, it was conceptually essential that it remains visible within the design from all directions as an integral part of the building and a kind of spatial landmark, and from the inside right from the moment of entering the plot and moving through the entire interior.
Ultimately, the building manifests itself as a dominant hovering roof amidst greenery, resulting from the merging of horizontally organised contents on the upper floor, volumes hidden within the intense greenery of the ground floor, and the pronounced verticality of the vertical air tower. A place where one will learn how to balance what nature brings and what technology brings us, a little bit from both worlds.
