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Architects: MITarh
- Area: 4364 m²
- Year: 2010
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Photographs:Rade Kovač and MITarh
Text description provided by the architects. This project required three different facilities: commercial building - later Hotel - for IM Matijevic, smaller business building and a public multi-level garage. The idea was to design the pieces and organize the functions in one compact and harmonious unity.
The basic principle in designing space in the central area of Novi Sad was to keep the unity of the entire building area, and to design structures perceived as a single mass, which would correspond to the surrounding buildings and area. Hotel is the first of these three buildings, which is built. The public garage and smaller business building are expected in the future.
Hotel is located across the beginning of the main pedestrian zone in Novi Sad and across of the Serbian National Theatre, as a dominant point in space. It was conceived as a cubic form, and follows years of research on the topic: "surface depth", "layers of membranes" and cubic design of Branislav Mitrović and MITarh team. Location of the hotel is very exposed and has dominate role in the city boulevard. The desire to make a distinctive, but unobtrusive and simple form in space, led us to balance the gap in the area by providing counterpart and counterweight to the power of geometry of the Serbian National Theatre. Medium to achieve a unified form, or a single volume is the envelope - the building facade, both homogeneous and transparent. This ambivalence is achieved by fine-structuring of material, in this case the vertical metal strips with periodic interruptions, that let the light inside and filter the outside surroundings.
This transparent and gossamer cubic form loses the prerogative of ordinary elements on the facade. Maximum transparency is achieved by the membrane, but also the strenght of the compact cube. The user who is located in the inner space has no sense of confinement or claustrophobia, as he essentially has a very clear view, while the passer from the outside perceives the object as a hermetic form, and only can peer into the privacy of the interior only in certain direct views. This design is a new purport of the relation between the inner and outer space. With its volume building shapes urban public space, and adjusts object to urban and investors' high dencity requirements. It fits into the context, which was one of the goals of the authors.
Height and composition of the new structure is determined in relation to the form of the traditional urban core. Difference to conventional understanding of the urban block is treating it as a unity, without taking into account the traditional elements - interpolation and the inner courtyard. Chosen facade makes possible that three objects, built hotel, and future business building and garage, act as a unified and compact form. Also, facade composed like this makes this house a sign and landmark in the surroundings. This year, on 33rd Salon of Architecture, Hotel "Centar" was awarded Grand Prix award for the best realized object in Serbia in 2010.
