‘The design (2007) of Tower A (the ‘Pine Cone’), one of the three 11-story residential towers along Prvomajska Street in Nova Gorica, aims to develop the interior and exterior surfaces of individual apartments into living ambiences reflecting the littoral position of Nova Gorica with its mild climate, numerous sunlit days and Mediterranean vegetation. The climate of the city once led it to be called the Austrian Nice and it is precisely this climate that enables a high level of living comfort within the covered exterior apartment surfaces (covered terraces) throughout the year.

Each apartment of Tower A, including the smallest studio apartments, has a balcony as well as a covered terrace accessible from various rooms of the interior, either from the living room or from one of the bedrooms. The interior of both the larger and the smaller apartments develops around the central living area with the dining room that opens onto a covered terrace. The skeleton construction at the perimeter and all installation shafts at the inner rim of the apartments at the central communication core enable great flexibility in the organization of the interior, from several smaller rooms in some apartments to open, ‘loft’ surfaces in others.

The pine cone form of the residential tower is determined by the 90′ rotation of the upper story in relation to the story underneath. The room of the story above thus covers and shades the terrace of the story underneath. Through such rotation, the star-shaped ground plan of each story creates a recognizable pine-cone form of the tower. Between the exterior and the interior rooms of apartments creates a three-dimensional, sculptural façade of the tower. The latter is partially glazed with transparent and colored translucent glass, while it is partly a plastered façade. The arrangement of glass panels into a double spiral that vertically wounds round the cone enables individual apartments to be distinguished from one another and identified within the homogeneous façade also from the surroundings of the tower.

The tower rises at the base from a high podium. The roof of the latter holds two atria of the apartments on the first story, but also a semi-public elevated garden, which represents another littoral ambience for living offered to the residents of the tower.’

Site area: 10.871 m2
Building area: 710 m2
Total floor area: 8.100 m2
Stories: ground floor, mezzanin, 10 stories + duplex
Structure: concrete platform, concrete walls + columns
Cladding: alu glazing + plaster
Program: living + retail, 72 apartments, 10 offices
Architect: SVA (Jurij Sadar, Boštjan Vuga, Tina Hočevar, Aleksandar Lalić, Eva Ibars Novella, Caglar Yazici)

More pictures: www.sadarvuga.com.