Life:) Business Centre has been developed by our company for Belarussian Telecommunication Network LLC. It was a challenging project as the team of architects were to fit a full-fledged office center into a very densely built-up area of Minsk. Also, there was another challenge to meet: one of the elements of the solution had to be a three-storied building with a garret floor.
Hence, the solution is based on balancing two volumes – a rebuilt four-storied building with a mansard instead of the fourth-floor, and an adjacent five-storied building. The façade of the first building faces Krasnoarmeiskaya Street to form a T-shaped construction with the other house attached from the side of the backyard. There is a glass gallery connecting the two houses. Visually, the houses are united the roofline of the new building. The roof goes beyond the limits of the main façade and forms an arch over the main entrance. On the 2-4 levels, showing up from under the arch is the glass volume of the recreation hall, which transforms into the gallery that connects both buildings.
The visual impression is that the new building, whose facades make a solid stained-glass glazing, that pierces through the entire redesigned construction and embraces the old building from above. In the meantime, the architects did an excellent job to suppress the dominance of the new building, which is both higher and wider. That was achieved, in the first place, at the expense of the perpendicular position to the old building; and secondly, by means of leveling the main volume of the new building to match the height of the old building (the fifth floor was made narrower, so it does not affect perception).
The vertical line of the façade glazing horizontally counterbalances the solid glazing of the mansard. In other words, the architects made a natural construction that combines certain elements and the exterior of the old building. The genuine solution has, in fact, cemented two buildings with different facades and the different number of floors into a stylistically single whole.
The total area of the building is 6,700 sqare metres. On the ground floor, just behind the main entrance, there is a lobby and office premises. On levels 2-4 there are offices and a spacious recreation hall, which can be accessed through the gallery from the new building. The ground floor of the new building comes with a lobby and large office to seat 21 staff, and a café to accommodate 50 guests. Level 2 is home to a conference hall that seats 100 people, a spacious foyer and another open office space. All working places in the building are designed in the spirit of the open-plan office concept, with bathroom units, mini kitchens and copy rooms.
Both buildings come with technical basements, while there is an underground car park under the new building to accommodate 24 vehicles – a must-have option in the busy downtown area. Both constructions have central air conditioning stations, fire alarm and security systems, access and surveillance control points. The new building offers two elevators in addition to the staircases.
On the whole, the project team has succeeded in meeting the maximum number of targets with a minimum toolkit: provide the customer with a contemporary building that offers a comfort environment for work, with the possibility of further development. Another important element is the public image of the head office, which now produces an impression of a dynamic youthful enterprise with an air of a reliable company that uses advanced technologies (the new building) coupled with traditional values (the redesigned building).