Graz | Ampliação da sede de Kastner&Ohler | Nieto Sobejano

[Koolhas]

Arq. Nieto Sobejano

The city of Graz owes its status as a world heritage site to the expressive medieval roofs of its historic centre. Kastner & Öhler covers a large block near the Town Hall square where the commercial building was built at the beginning of the 20th century. The object of the international competition comprised a significant extension which would give the existing building a new exterior roof where restaurants, cafés and terraces would complement an expansion of the commercial site. Our project is born out of a geometric law. Geometry has frequently been considered a limitation of formal liberty, but can it not also mean the contrary? - the raison d'être of space, of a structure or even the image of the new extension to the city? It is precisely the irregularity of the different buildings of K&Ö which has led us to establish a pattern, a rhythm of exteriors which will unite the complex. A single material unites the exterior of the new extension: sheets of galvanised steel with phosphate finish without any joints visible to the outside. A new roofscape will be created as a sharp and precise iridescent body in dialogue with the irregular medieval roofs.