How to give new life to a dilapidated piece of building history and ensure its future? This can be illustrated by the story of the premises of the once famous Vlněna enterprise, in which there are critical moments, but everything ends with a happy ending.
Vlněna was one of the oldest and also the largest wool processing factory complexes in Brno.
The origins of the complex date back to the 18th century. It was successively owned by the manufacturer Josef Biegmann, the Bochner family and the Stiass family, and at the beginning of II. During the Second World War, the German Julius Kunert already acquired extensive properties. After liberation, the company was nationalized and became part of the national company Vlněna. The building was used for textile production until 2008, when the last line of the smaller private company Vlnako was shut down. She continued traditional wool production.
By that time, the entire campus was already in a very dismal state. The situation started to improve only in 2016, when it was acquired by the CTP company.
She demolished that part of the buildings on the campus and replaced them with new ones. However, she managed to save and reconstruct key and architecturally valuable places. Thus, it rightfully received attention from the judges of the Grand Prix of Architects - National Prize for Architecture.
The complex is located within sight of the center of Brno in the built-up area of a city block with an area of about 40,000 square meters between Dornych, Přízová and Mlýnská streets and the Ponávka river.
The new complex was thus created on the site of the original brownfield, which represented the former Vlněna textile factory. The original Bochner Palace from 1867, which is one of the oldest Neo-Renaissance palaces in Brno, has been preserved in the immediate vicinity of the new buildings.
"Despite the declared demolition measure for the entire territory of the factory, the investor decided to reconstruct the palace. During the repair, it was possible to discover preserved original stucco ceilings, the entire staircase and valuable supporting structures on the ground floor. The original Výtopna building with a chimney should also be preserved," said chief architect Václav Hlaváček for the Studio acht architectural office.
He explained that when creating the future form of such a large area, it was necessary to work with the scale of the neighborhoods that it directly touches.
Inside the administrative area, an open inner block was created with a number of shops and services and freely accessible urban greenery, opening into the garden behind the Bochner Palace.
The entrance to the inner block begins with the visually dominant building H. “Does it look like a promontory? Or like a pebble? It affects the observer differently from each location," explained Hlaváček.