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Hitting on a concept, a great idea that meets both client demands and the characteristics of the designated setting, is how Polish architecture firm KWK Promes approaches any brief. It is what links all the firm’s projects, which, although varying widely in both type and scale, all bear the designer’s recognizable signature.
The request by Gambit Systems, a plastic pipe distributor in Gliwice, Poland, was for a low-budget construction to house both offices and warehouse that would also be an exceptionally eloquent showcase of what the company does. On the basis of these non-negotiable client requirements and the characteristics of the context, the designers came up with a uniquely original building whose façade recalls the company’s product and whose shape echoes the local urban neighborhood.
Close to Katowice and Krakow, Gliwice is also within close reach of the country’s major road network, factors which led the city to become an industrial hub, as is evident from its layout and building typologies. The site of the new Gambit Systems HQ is close to the southern segment of the E40 motorway that flanks a mixed quarter made up of traditional, pitched-roof detached or multi-family residences alongside typical parallelepiped industrial sheds.
The dual make-up of this contemporary Gliwice neighborhood was the firm’s conceptual starting point for the building’s design: a rectangular footprint made up of two volumes, one for each side of the business – offices occupying the pitched roof section that references the typical residential buildings of the area, and a shed-shaped section holding the warehouse –, the two joined by a smaller segment. The result is a new type of building amalgamating two different functional requirements but also taking on board the character of the surrounding constructions.
The façade presents as a showcase par excellence of Gambit’s...
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