Multipurpose hall – hospitality and production building
The project won the international CEMEX Building Award 2019 in Mexico – winning third place in the Infrastructure and Civil Works category, competing against more than 400 projects from all over the world.
The commercial building follows and adapts to the contemporary multifaceted needs of a hospitality family farm.
In terms of design, the building builds upon the archetypal forms of a rural house within a contemporary expression.
The new commercial building for production and hospitality purposes in Rakov Potok is an integral part of the building complex within the Franja family farm. Given the intensity of its use, this programmatically layered building follows the contemporary multifaceted needs of a hospitality family farm, providing space for a series of events, while also satisfying the community’s need for public space.
Functional complementarity with the existing restaurant, hotel, and kindergarten – in the vicinity of which it is situated – spatially conditioned the formation of a harmonious micro-urban entity, bounding the newly created semi-open square/courtyard. The building is positioned on the edge, acting as a kind of pavilion that forms a barrier against the road, ensuring a more intimate stay in the park. Access to the park is integrated into the building by forming a passage that leads towards the main event area.
The new building’s design builds upon the archetypal forms of a rural house within a contemporary expression. Positioned on the edge of the settlement, along a gentle bend in the road, its entrance facade becomes the “face” of the locality itself. Merging the need for a large open space with the less elongated forms typical of traditional rural construction results in the dissolving of the archetypal volume into a compact, open, multipurpose space. The sizeable volume is visually broken down into smaller elements, whilst retaining the unity of the interior space. The facade design is defined by the targeted opening of surfaces, which highlights the connection with the park.
The roof surfaces took on more ambitious spans in order to reduce the number of columns in the interior to a minimum, thereby ensuring more open space. The rather honest and raw appearance of concrete as the primary building material is used as a counterweight to the usual scenography of the most frequent events (celebrations), allowing the interior to be “finished” anew each time through the decor, depending on the current purpose of the space.
