Dutch architect KCAP has won an international competition to design two residential towers in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava. The taller of the two, at 260m, will be the second tallest in the EU after the 310m Varso Tower in Warsaw.
The second will be 180m in height. The designs are for an 8,200-sq-m site on the eastern end of Pribinova Avenue, near the Apollo Bridge over the Danube.
It was acquired by local developer JTRE with plans for 1,100 homes with a total floor area of 115,000 sq m. The setting is a former industrial district west of the historic centre undergoing regeneration.
JTRE says it’s now a “vibrant live-work-play quarter” with modern architecture and green public spaces. The towers have a “bundle of sticks” design, with distinct rectangular volumes fused together, each with a different height. This allows each to have a communal terrace and increases the number of corner apartments and broadens the views.
The towers are also slightly askew to the street grid to maximise sunlight and minimise wind loading. Heat pumps and solar panels will improve energy performance.
Other sustainability features include a decentralised ventilation system with heat recovery and a demountable façade system.KCAP said the apartments will have “innovative floorplans, defined by highly efficient hashtag shaped structural cores extending out, in pinwheel formations”.
At the base will be a glass pavilions, complete with vegetation and cafés, that will link the towers and create a social space.
The competition jury said the design promised to be “an exemplary model for sustainable high-rise living” with softened environmental impacts.
?KCAP was founded in Rotterdam in 1989 by Kees Christiaanse, and is now led by seven partners. It has branch offices in Zürich, Paris and Shanghai, and works with a staff of more than 100 and mainly works in Europe and Asia.
