Lake Malta
Lake Malta is a unique phenomenon on a national scale. It is an artificially created regatta course located almost in the middle of the city. Apart from its sporting qualities, it is also a place for relaxation. Around the lake there are paths, where Poznań citizens walk, ride bicycles and rollerblade. Malta is a big loop, traffic. The area where we designed the café is a narrow strip of land between a clump of trees and the lake with a saddle topography, through which one of the paths encircling the lake runs.
Idea
While working on the project we had the adage "old trees don't get replanted" in our minds all the time, so we wanted to design the building in such a way that the above-mentioned path would not have to be eliminated (although the functional programme filled practically the whole plot). This is how this building was created - a bridge under which the café is hidden. We call it the Green Bridge, because its surface is grass.
Building
The path runs up the southern part of the green roof, the northern part is where you can stop and enjoy the panoramic view of the lake. This bridge is spanned by a terrace that is divided into three zones. The southern terrace, whose projection is slightly bent by the tree that grows there (the building was designed not to cut down any trees), also contains a path that is the access to the café and a small pool with water. The middle section, which is directly under the "bridge" and is the actual building. And the north terrace overlooking the regatta course. The technical part of the café (kitchen, toilets, etc.) is hidden under the eastern part of the "bridge". Malta is also a place of entertainment, and one of its attractions is a floating stage, so an additional element of the assumption is an amphitheatre for 250 people. The project also has a few non-standard technical solutions: glass curtains protecting the interior of the café, barless glazing, which due to its height (the building is located in the zone of strong winds) is designed in the accordion system, so that the individual panes block each other, creating a rigid and durable system. The structure of the building is prestressed concrete with spacing between supports reaching almost 18m.
Details
All ventilation and air-conditioning equipment (which we selected with attention to their low noise emissions), has been concealed in an enclosure on the roof reminiscent of a submarine kiosk. The façade is made of extruded sheet metal with different sizes of meshes, arranged at different angles to give the impression of spaciousness by using an interference effect similar to that of butterfly wings. The colour of the facade cladding is the colour of the visual identity of the entire regatta course.
Drawings
