Jaclyn Residential & Office Building Bulgaria

Jaclyn Residential & Office Building, Sofia 2005-08 Aedes studio Programme: Mixed use residential and office building Size: 21,000 sqm Photos : Georgi Markov On assigning the project, the investor set the theme of wood. They initially saw the whole façade lined with wood but subsequently we had to find a less costly solution. The first image of timber we had while thinking of it as material was a pile of wooden planks. What we wanted to create was a hive of family houses perched on top of one another. Giving the inhabitants a chance to easily recognize their home in and out was a key objective. The building is composed of multiple volumes fitting into one another. We wanted a potential for motion and further development rather than a finite set of elements. The allocation of material and color across the site helped us “diminish” it and make it intelligible so one might grasp it in a single glance. The various graphical signs cropping up here and there on the boxes contribute to its being life-size. They are intended to put across a character, a face out of anonymity rather than just showing the way. A little nudge to suggest how open the design process is, so everybody can take it along into yet another direction. We consciously stayed away from unifying the homes and stringing them along a vertical. No two flats in this lineup are the same. The building has proven to have a measure of social effect. We tried to foresee what kind of people would inhabit it. Wealth and status notwithstanding, we ended up with a Jaclyn apparently being liked by its residents, which shows it managed to strike a unifying chord in their tastes. Jaclyn Building Sofia images / information from Aedes studio 250309