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Architects: Erginoğlu & Çalışlar Architects
- Year: 2013
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Photographs:Cemal Emden
Project description
The Power Station Master Plan Project consists of the restoration of the Power Station and the master plan of the surrounding area. The Power Station is located on a natural harbor in the Bay of Baku, which used to serve as a small shipyard for the ships working for the oil platforms.
The Power Station was built by Siemens around 1900s and has lost its function as a power station but the building, with its beautiful stone construction, stands out from all the other surrounding buildings and has a unique aesthetic.
Although the whole project started with a request to rebuild a new power station, after a period of persuasion, keeping and restoring the power station became the primary objective of project. The scope of the project was to reuse the Power Station and build another building to house cultural and entertainment organizations. The area surrounding the power station was in poor condition, so the scope extended to the design of a master plan for the whole area.
The new building was named ‘The Power Station’ and The Old Power House, was proposed to be transformed into a museum.
The new building complex, the New Power House, consists of 2 buildings linked with an enclosed bridge. An axis, starting with the Flagport Square and the highest flag poll of the world, crossing right between the New Power House buildings and ending on the other side of the bay with a possible future bridge, was created to link these elements both virtually and physically.
The New Power House design reflects what defines an industrial building in the collective memory and yet has a contemporary style too. The simple geometric mass, use of zinc and wood for the large sloped roof and the façade helped the building revive the industrial spirit of the master plan area.
The spatial features of the building, the high ceilings and the wide interiors, enable it to serve as a flexible, multifunctional space.
The restaurants, Jazz club and the concert area, all have access routes to each other to form a dynamic circulation between the two buildings.
Baku has a yearlong rainy and windy weather, so canopies were created to enable outdoor gatherings, in front of the buildings.
The coastal promenade of the Flagport area extends to the small bay of the Power Station master plan area. The direction to the Power Station buildings was strengthened with landscape design to allure more people. Industrial obsolete machinery were implemented as urban sculptures while enriching the activity of the park and giving it an atmosphere of open air museum. The buildings have been completed and started functioning since 2014.
