The project is located in the city of Dobrich, Bulgaria, which has based its growth around agriculture and the food industry. The industrial district of the city has inherited a number of monumental pre-cast concrete facilities from the past socialist era, some of which are configured to accommodate contemporary production. One such warehouse happens to be the home of an extraordinary business, especially for this locality, which has been growing and looking for a new environment to represent its identity, and comfortably facilitate the dynamic requirements of the present. The company is producing specialized stainless-steel equipment for the dairy and etheric oil industry and is trading its manufacture worldwide.
FUNKT was contracted for the renovation of their production warehouse. This included the reconstruction of the administrative building, the refurbishment of its staff facilities, a new outdoor rest area, and new entrances and landscaping works. The concept was developed around the re-use of existing materials, the use of natural local materials, and the investment of skills of the factory’s craftsmen in order to bring civic pride to their work environment.
To reduce building waste, the glazing of the original building was dismantled and reincorporated into a new patchwork façade of solids and voids. This shaped a key feature of the interior - a double skin corridor on the upper floor of the administrative building, which serves as a main circulation connection, while also providing thermal and sound insulation for the office cabinets. Its interplay of pierced views aids each office room to acquire its own distinctive feel. The project also involves high-tech systems for the automatization of lighting, heating and shading utilities, which reduce energy consumption and optimize staff operational time and workability.
Motion sensors change the light spectrum depending on the time of day. Thus, in the morning, the LED lamps throughout the building shine in a colder light, and as the evening approaches, it becomes warmer, which makes the working day much more pleasant and the light - closer to natural. Тhe supporting frame elements for the glazing and façade panels were fully manufactured on site by the factory’s craftsmen, as the client was also the contractor, and the design was considered so as to allow the workers to implement it on site.
The interior’s furniture has been also materially and technically informed by the factory’s working environment and has been designed in a low tech, simple and practical manner, with all metal parts produced by the factory’s staff. Inviting them into the building process ultimately developed high engagement on a social level from both sides - the architect and the participating occupants of the building. Consequentially, this involvement contributed to the co-creation of an authentic visual and material vocabulary, closely knit to the company’s identity and core values.