The building stands as a solitary structure next to one of Sofia’s most important traffic routes, the connection between Sofia’s city centre and the international airport. The project is situated within a rough unstructured urban district, on the border of the Mladost housing estate and next to the city motorway; the building wishes to loosen up the severity and unpleasantness of the surrounding environment.

Structural shell

The building complex consists of a main body upon which two towers lean, these are connected by only one vertical core. This allows the developers to rent or sell the main body with the towers as one unit or alternatively as separate individual units. The structural shell of the building allows optimal utilisation and lighting of the office spaces. The stark drop of the buildings external landscape will be utilised to allow the design and building of further office units in the first basement level. In the further two basement levels parking places for 100 cars is planned. The entrance of the office complex offers itself up in the form of a double-height glazed foyer with a reception situated on the ground floor and a small café on the floating gallery above.

Vertical core

An optimisation of the users usable office space is achieved by means of combining the lifts and stairwells into one zone placed at the interior of the building mass; this will also allow the possibility of efficient and adaptable office layouts for any future users; In this way the sustainability of the building and investment is also taken into account.

Construction

The main body of the building will consist of a reinforced concrete skeleton where the floors and ceilings will be constructed without the need of exposed beams. The external skin will be hung from a curtain-wall system. The longer sides of the building mass have the appearance of a “hole-punched” façade with massive, non-structural walls carrying the skin consisting of large ceramic tiles. Both office towers differentiate themselves with the use of colour; enabled by a pigmentation process of the ceramic tiles. The heavier appearance of the “hole-punched” façade of the external shell creates an engrossing counterpart to the light, glazed covering of the “forehead” of both towers. The distance between window axis is 250 cm with a window size of 125 cm. Protection from the intense summer sun in the glazed sections is achieved with the use of externally fixed louvres.

Energy concept

The core of the air conditioning and heating system is situated below in the first basement level. The air supply of the office spaces is carried-out by a fancoil unit system invisibly integrated into the raised floor construction. The waste air is dealt with by a system integrated into the suspended ceiling of the office corridors. Heating and temperature requirements and climatic fluctuations will be balanced out at the external skin by using the storage abilities of floors and wall masses. A comfortable room climate will also be supported through the intensive planting and landscaping of the external environment and by the “greening” of the terrace above the fourth floor level.

Client: S-Center Sofia / Soravia Bulgaria
Architecture: Torniov, Petkov, Vucinic ARGE (Co-op) / Wien - Sofia
Execution: +architecture ltd. / Sofia, Bulgaria
Project leader: Angel Savlakov
Co-work: Elitsa Dimitrova, Ivan Arnaudov