The brief to the architects was to design a two floor building with commercial functions : retail on the ground floor and a private office on the first floor . The second floor ( roof ) needed to follow its neighbour ’ s height in terms of the urban skyline , through a 2.5m high wall . Therefore , this project encompasses three different characteristics over three levels , all with different communication with the urban space .
Since this project has different addresses for each function , the idea was to connect the functions both separately and directly to the urban space . Furthermore , the architects needed to find a vertical access solution . The separator between the functions ( retail & office ) was recognized as the most critical part of this project to implicate as architecture element to generate the form . That separator was the slab which is characterized from one side , as office floor and from the other side , as retail ceiling . The retail ceiling slab bent and became habitable as stairs to connect the office directly to the walkway in front .
The roof was devoted to the office , as a roof garden for business ceremonies and outdoor parties . The façade is a continuous covering system which is made of local bricks that are patterned with local and traditional brick layering techniques , in order to match with the context .
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