City Park Jihlava

   
The City Park shopping centre was the first large centre of its kind in Jihlava. It was built between 2007 and 2009 according to the project created by the Brno architectural office Kuba & Pilař architects (Kuba & Pilař architekti). Ladislav Kuba and Tomáš Pilař designed City Park as a compact, relatively large complex that sits in the steep valley of the Koželužský Brook. Originally, the site was occupied by industrial buildings with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. However, due to their dilapidated condition, they gave way to the new construction. Like the former factory, City Park is sunken into the valley to some extent. The shopping centre has a total of six floors. The upper two floors house multiplex cinema screens, the two-storey shopping arcade is located below them, and there is also an underground garage with 850 parking spaces. Towards the main Hradební Street, City Park is much more intimate, as the lower floor of the shopping gallery is located below its level. Only the two towers and the multiplex cinema building rise higher, and they look quite attractive in the context of the historic walls and their bastions opposite.

Jihlava’s City Park is a relatively urban formative complex, which is not always commonplace for buildings of this type. In this respect, it's worth comparing City Park with another, newer shopping centre on the outskirts of Jihlava that lacks such qualities. Even so, the architects Ladislav Kuba and Tomáš Pilař refer to City Park as a "shopping can", which does not pretend to be anything else and does not hide its function. Modern shopping centres bring all the shops together inwards. The typical retail parterre, which would maintain contact with the street, is not needed here. That is why City Park doesn't have one either. However, the architects attempted to solve this problem by sprucing up the main façade, which displays a plastic geometric grid, a kind of "bar code". It consists of weathering steel, dark glossy glass, and hot-dip galvanized industrial grilles with climbing greenery. The glass surfaces unobtrusively mirror their surroundings and almost illusively substitute the role of the missing windows. Due to the fact that the shopping centre is relatively low, its roof has remained exposed to view. Its design follows the form of the façade cladding, including the greenery used.

The project for the construction of the City Park shopping centre also involved the revitalisation of its surroundings. A cycle path with a green corridor now runs along the back of the centre. A wetland has also been created there and the Koželužský Brook, which had previously been routed through a pipe, now has an open stream bed again. Given its location on a slope, the shopping centre is easily accessible. On the side of the intersection of Hradební and Znojemská Streets, the building overhangs the creek bed with its warehouses and other facilities. On their roof, a smaller dwelling area was created, which connects to the network of paths on the opposite side of the slope.

Although City Park is still not perceived in a completely positive way by some of the local residents, as a shopping centre, it represents a sociological rather than a purely architectural issue. "I confess that no matter how well designed, I will never consider a shopping arcade with bubbling fountains or the hall of a cultural institution with the fastest Wi-Fi connection to be a full-fledged alternative to a street or a square," says Tomáš Pilař in this context. The City Park shopping centre won the 2009 Building of the Year award and is an example of unusually good practice in its category.

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