The UPI-2M architectural studio, best known for designing the Arena sports halls in Zagreb, has won the first prize at the competition for the architectural proposal for the new Zagreb city library at Paromlin (old steam mill), reports Večernji List on March 2, 2019.
As announced yesterday by the Zagreb Architects Society (DAZ), twenty proposals were submitted to the competition that was published last October, and the jury selected the top five. The UPI-2M project was voted as the best, and the eight-member team will receive 271,040 kuna.
“By analysing the wider and narrower area around Paromlin, we have addressed the question of how to design a city library complex that should take into account the strict conservative regulations which protect the Paromlin buildings as a site of a highly-valuable industrial architecture monument,” said the studio, adding that the organic form of the new part the city library building would be in contrast with the strict lines and the volumes of the existing and protected Paromlin buildings.
For this reason, the facade of the new part would reflect the surrounding components of the complex, the warehouses for flour and silos, as well as the surrounding park which would, according to architects, dematerialise its own volume.
“In the existing Paromlin buildings we plan to accommodate the administrative parts of the library, while the new building and its levels from -1 to +2 would house public facilities, i.e. entrance hall with a conference room, department for children and youth, reading rooms for collections and magazines, music department with a public roof terrace,” explained the UPI-2M studio, adding that the -2 level is reserved for technical areas and the public garage space.
The reconstruction of Paromlin will cost around 300 million kuna, and the new city library will not be constructed until at least 2025. The funding for the project, as announced by the city authorities, should at least partly be provided from the European Union funds.
Translated from Večernji List (reported by Mateja Šobak).
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