Hilton hotel on Rajiceva Street in Belgrade
Competition
entry for proposal of the new Hilton Hotel on Rajiceva street, in Belgrade,
Serbia. 1999 ~ 40000m².
My involvement in this design resulted in
producing: a master plan of the site with mixture of preserving old buildings
and designing new buildings, designing a new 5 star hotel ( Hilton ), new
commercial area, adapting an old apartment building to be a part of the new
hotel - with exclusive apartments, an underground garage, a new underground
metro station with commercial spaces, a new City Gallery and finally a new
square to be a part of pedestrian zone.
The whole new complex above ground is designed
by a group of elliptically shaped buildings breaking apart common matrix of
surrounding building blocks. There is a strong diagonal pedestrian communication
in a form of a internal street on the second floor that connects Knez Mihajlova
Street - a famous pedestrian street in the center of Belgrade, with Tadeusa
Koscuskog Street at the other end. Along this newly formed street there are
numerous entrances to various parts of the complex, including: independent
entrance for visitors of The City Gallery, entrance to the business center,
hotel, cinema and shopping mall. In the center of the new hotel there is a
mixture of hotel rooms on the outside of the ellipse with City Gallery with
spiral ramps (something like Guggenhimes Gallery in New York) on the inside of
the ellipse. They are separated in function but are grouped as a form. This was
one of my design phases when I thought that originality together with talent
would bring me a prize in this competition. Well I was wrong, and to my
disliking a total sterile design won a prize.
The facades of the new complex consist of: blue semi reflecting glass, alucobond and granite stone panels. On the inside there are vast glass surfaces interrupted by walls covered with: Prodema's wooden composite panels, granite ceramic tiles and special composite panels covered with plastic.