Located next to the former headquarters of the Bellona publishing house, both buildings will be connected by a common lobby creating an unprecedented composition on the Polish market; and the project will stand at the intersection of Towarowa and Grzybowska streets, next to Plac Europejski, European Square, and will offer office space.
For UNStudio to design a new high-rise development means addressing the issue on how new building developments can perform in a new urban context, creating a framework for a sustainable future. Our design does exactly this, with its spatial organisation, it strategically bridges the public spaces around it; but most importantly, it re-invents the city’s connection to its heritage by blending the historic Bellona building into a single composition with the new tower.
The 40 storey building will provide approximately 280 parking spaces as well as bicycle facilities, 147 seats, lockers and showers provided. It will also be equipped with technical and environmentally friendly solutions. The building will include chargers for electric cars and a special parking lot for electric two-wheelers with a place to charge them, bicycles and electric scooters, with 20 places for charging them.
The Bridge will also have an operating system, developed and implemented by Ghelamco, which will allow for efficient access control management and solutions increasing its safety in case of an epidemic, among others, virucidal UV lamps which will be placed in lifts and air intakes. The building will be BREEAM and WELL-certified, as well as Green Building Standard. It will also be named “Object with no barriers”.
The Bellona building, whose facade was painstakingly restored by Ghelamco in 2016, will be preserved and connected to the tower. This will create a symbolic bridge between the old architecture and the modern building. The result of this combination will be a remarkable lobby that ties the two buildings together.
In the future, a mini park will be created on the side of Grzybowska Street, in the place where a parking lot used to be. In this way, the entrance to The Bridge will lead through a green square, and Plac Europejski itself will get closer to Towarowa Street and Grzybowska Street, where through the lobby of the skyscraper you will be able to get to its main part. An additional entrance to the square will also lead through the gate of the residence at 73 Grzybowska Street, which will soon undergo a thorough renovation. In the first floor of the skyscraper, on the side of Plac Europejski, there will be a place for a café. Additionally, on the top floor of the former Bellona publishing house there will be space for a restaurant with a terrace.
The square itself will be planted with new greenery once construction is complete, but the basic shape of the square, designed by the renowned Belgian firm Wirtz International, will not change.
The estimated completion date for The Bridge is late 2024.