Built and sealed shut—probably the most painful fate for a building.
This was the fate of a building complex in the center of Palanga, which, only after a decade and with the emergence of an ambitious developer, was decided to be revived. In the context of Palanga, the massive volumes strongly stand out from the low-rise surroundings, so the main task was to disrupt the environment of the plot and the lobby spaces to make them pleasant to the human scale.
Upon visiting the object for the first time, the building was like a person without a soul—apartments illegally occupied by random individuals, old furniture, linens, old construction drawings, a thick layer of dust, long dim corridors. The architect-designed, expressive “bridge” type passageways to the apartments, forming vertical light channels, give it character, but the remaining environment was lifeless.
The idea for the revitalization of the lobby’s interior was clear: light was needed.
The concept of the interior finishes—lobbies = outdoors. On the first floor, next to the apartments, like at the traditional entrance to a house, plants appeared, and each door was illuminated like an outdoor lamp. The walls of the lobbies are covered with travertine slabs, whose verticality acts as a counterbalance to the long corridor spaces. Natural stone patterns and colors create different sensations as you move through the space towards the apartments. Additionally, for the decor of the first floor, wood veneer panels were used—a reinterpretation of the building’s base.
Working together with a lighting designer, five types of lighting were chosen to implement the concept: plant lighting, “bridge” lighting, local door lighting, filling vertical spaces with floating-glowing objects, and an installation created by a light artist in one of the corps.
The project is still in the implementation stage, but the complex experience with the diversity of design phases, involving professionals from various fields in the process, has yielded a good result that both parties—the developers and us—are satisfied with. This former black spot in the city has come back to life and started to function. Large-scale complexes can be cozy; attention and care to key solutions are required.
Project Management, Interior Design: Kopa Architects
Photography: studio_linkevicius
Lighting Design: Rūta Palionytė
Light Sculpture: Linas Kutavičius
Landscape Architect: Asta Grabauskienė
