Can apartment buildings in seaside tourist resorts be beautiful? The Baltic Apartments, designed by the {tag:pracownie} studio, have shown that yes, as appreciated by the jury of the International Architecture Awards 2024.
The architecture of tourist resorts not infrequently becomes the subject of criticism. Objects such as the Golebiewski Hotel in Pobierowo, Crystal Mountain in Wisla or the Mercure Szczyrk Resort Hotel overwhelm the existing buildings in size and form and interfere far from the expression of the surrounding landscape. However, there are apartment buildings that are far from the irreverent aesthetics of tourist molochs - one of which has just received an important international award. We are talking about the Bałtycki Apartments, designed by the maxberg studio.
Bałtycki Apartments with an award from the International Architecture Awards 2024!
Photo: Sylwia Gudaczewska © maxberg
apartment buildings inscribed in the neighborhood
Creating development near the coastline is a responsible task. Pressure from investors with a large and distinctive building on their hands makes it even more difficult. This not infrequently results in buildings that are overscaled, resemble giant ships or ineptly imitate old buildings. In the case of the Baltic Apartments, however, the opposite happened. The architects of the maxberg studio have developed a form that leads a dialogue with both the architecture of the pre-war villas of Swinoujscie and the landscape of the coastal dune where the investment is located.
Bałtycki Apartments with an award from the International Architecture Awards 2024!
Photo: Sylwia Gudaczewska © maxberg
As part of it, two apartment buildings, five and seven stories high, were built on a small plot of land 300 meters from the beach. Their scale and outlines refer to the surrounding pre-war architecture of the resort. The buildings were based on trapezoidal projections, and the contours of individual elevations or roof slopes were shaped in a similar way. The resulting forms reflect the variability of the building line along the Health Promenade, along which the apartment buildings have grown. The contours of their blocks, in turn, correspond to the nearby building of the former nursing home "Fregata", which is listed in the register of monuments.
Baltic Apartments with an award from the International Architecture Awards 2024!
Photo: Sylwia Gudaczewska © maxberg
However, it is rather far from the aesthetics of resort architecture, both pre-war and contemporary, for the Bałtycki Apartments. This is because the design team abandoned the traditional horizontal divisions or white cladding, characteristic of naval architecture. It's also in vain to look here for sloping roofs or eclectic detailing. Instead, the focus was on minimalism, and inspiration was taken from the surrounding landscape. The building's walls are obscured by wooden slats, which create a rhythmic, chiaroscuro play on the facade. The vertical pattern created by this treatment allowed Bałtycki Apartments to blend into the pine forest that surrounds it on two sides.
Bałtycki Apartments with an award from the International Architecture Awards 2024!
Photo: Sylwia Gudaczewska © maxberg
engineering masterpiece
The Bałtycki Apartments are two buildings that sophisticatedly tied together several distinct construction philosophies. The underground part, which includes utility rooms and garages, was created from concrete poured on site. Everything above ground is a clever combination of prefabricated concrete, steel and wood. Thus, the skeleton and walls, but also the roof, staircases and balconies were created from prefabricated elements. The task was not made easier by the use of unusual forms - truncated roofs or trapezoidal rooms whose layouts vary from floor to floor. The puzzle was extremely demanding not only from a design perspective - the maxberg studio also coped with complicated logistics, as each technology was implemented by a separate construction bureau.
Baltic Apartments with the 2024 International Architecture Awards!
Photo: Sylwia Gudaczewska © maxberg
work was not in vain
Efforts paid off - the building was constructed relatively quickly, and thanks to the use of prefabricated elements, the impact that construction work had on the environment was minimized. The realization was appreciated in numerous competitions - not only Polish ones. After all, Bałtycki Apartments was awarded in the 2022 TopBuilder competition and in last year's Poland Urban Awards, but was also included in the shortslist of the international Share Architecture Award event. Now the studio has announced that the development built to its design has won the International Architecture Awards 2024 in the multifamily housing category. Congratulations!
Responsible for the design of the building are:
arch. Karol Nieradka
arch. Grzegorz Skalski
arch. Michal Jaroszewicz
arch. Sylwia Gudaczewska
