"Hilton" hotel: Innovative spatial and technological intervention in the Belgrade's urban fabric

Abstract

During its decade-long realization, the design of the "HILTON" Hotel in Belgrade has undergone all professional and investment procedures of the turbulent Serbian architectural field. Each of the events in the process of its creation has brought an additional layer and interpretation, but more importantly, it has become a public act. This is exactly what essentially makes a quality of this realization: visibility of the building's changeability, both as a process and as its spatiality. The building defines the strength of the city block and at the same time brings a new interpretation of the street through a new/traditional loading into the urban matrix. Moving away from the constants of the existing context, in order to delicately redefine it, this building, like a movement in an interspace, both is and is not: a corner building, a massive repetition of the uniform openings and space. The street is integrated by the envelop into the inner space in order to connect the public contents, thus achieving a new layerness and depth of the public space, but also creating a clean space for the repetitive programme of the hotel accentuating the structural elements which move away from the typological patterns. The vertical degradation characterized by the tree-like support of the usual, becomes a memory of the building. The innovative technological concepts are in a dialogue with it by sophisticatedly sublimating all characteristics of the building in its architectural variability: between the (re)definition of the context and the technological intervention.

Projekat hotela "HILTON" u Beogradu, tokom decenijske realizacije, prošao je sve profesionalne i investicione procedure burnog srpskog arhitektonskog polja. Svaki od događaja u postupku njegovog stvaranja, doneo je dodatni sloj i interpretaciju, ali postao je i javni čin. Upravo to čini suštinski kvalitet ove realizacije: vidljivost promenljivosti objekta, i kao procesa, i kao njegove prostornosti. Objekat definiše čvrstinu gradskog bloka i istovremeno donosi novu interpretaciju ulice kroz novo/ tradicionalno učitavanje u urbanu matricu. Izmičući konstantama postojećeg konteksta, da bi ga delikatno redefinisao, ovaj objekat, poput kretanja u međuprostoru, i jeste i nije ugaoni objekat i masivna repeticija ujednačenih otvora i prostora. Anvelopom se integriše ulica u unutrašnji prostor da bi se povezali javni sadržaji, ostvarujući novu slojevitost i dubinu javnog prostora, ali i projektuje čist prostor za repetitivni program hotela sa akcentovanjem strukturalnih elemenata koji izmiču tipološkim obrascima. Vertikalna razgradnja koju karakteriše stablolika potpora od uobičajenog, postaje memorija objekta. Sa njom su u dijalogu inovativne tehnološke koncepcije sofisticirano sublimirajući sve karakteristike objekta u njegovoj arhitektoničnoj varijabilnosti: između (re)definicije konteksta i tehnološke intervencije.