Antonijas Street
Antonijas Street
Location: Antonijas iela 17, 21, Rīga
Client: Vastint Latvia
Size: 12 997 m2
Year: 2017
Status: Competition | Winning Proposal | Ongoing
Team: Pēteris Bajārs, Ivars Kalvāns, Guna Priede, Jānis Aufmanis, Arta Lāce, Luīze Elizabete Rukšāne, Vadims Lando
Two buildings, one structure. Two finishes, one façade rhythm. Light and dark. Sloping rooves facing flat ones. An opening onto Antonijas Street and a view of the newly created courtyard. The buildings are so different, but at the same time similar. Quite like Antonijas Street itself.
The section of Antonijas Street facing the Magdalēna buildings experienced rapid development during a period of transformation - in the archive materials, one can still find construction designs for four-storey buildings that rose to a height of six storeys, while the traits of vertical art nouveau and national romanticism are gradually replaced by functional asceticism. This eclectic, but at the same time highly uniform style of construction was achieved by using united motifs: a two-storey high plinth, a uniform eave line, the narrow vertical windows characteristic of the art nouveau period, and numerous bay windows and roof structures. Now, the time has come for rapid changes to the other side of the street, in accordance with contemporary trends, but at the same respecting the formal principles of historical building.
The proposed solution respects the regulations for territorial usage and construction applicable in Riga’s historical centre and its protected zone, detailed planning requirements and territorial provisions serving to protect an urban construction monument of national importance, i.e. ‘the City of Riga’s Historical Centre’, thus creating a building structure corresponding to the era and urban environmental context, and ensuring the corresponding quality of urban construction and rational usage of territory.
