PHARMACY DZIRCIEMA
The new pharmacy on the corner of Jūrmalas gatve and Dzirciema street is not just a building, but rather a free-standing pavilion or environmental installation. Its overall image is modest and conceptually assertive, but at the same time keenly different from the surrounding urban environment and attractively expressing the contents of the building.
Architectural solution of the pharmacy has been made as compromise in the negotiation process with the urban architects from the local construction monitoring institutions. In order to compensate the urban scale on the corner of the housing quarter with five-storey residential buildings, a number of architectural composition requirements were imposed for the overall image of the new pharmacy building, with the aim to make the new construction completely different from the traditional low-rise background buildings.
According to the location of the new pharmacy the plot visually and functionally perceived as a small city square. The concept is based on the development of a public outdoor installation. Openwork sixteenth-corner metal construction basket two storey high is designed to be filled with the required function of the pharmacy. In order to ensure the function of the newly created facility, the installation was designed with reference to pharmacy, what would be easily recognisable from the potential buyers of drugs and other medicines. The building's facade installation frame uses the traditional pharmacy symbol – a cross as a module which would be left open or filled with perforated aluminium panels depending on the needs of the inner plans of the building.
The building's bearing construction is based on four columns of reinforced concrete. The columns located in the middle of the building to make the perimeter of the building fully subordinated to the parametric pattern of the facade installation.
The circular form of the new pharmacy is subordinated to the main daily function of the square - an active pedestrian transit area in all possible directions. The new footpath system is designed as a touches on a ring of granite plates built around the sixteen corner building.
New installation is not only a design element of the parametric architecture, but also some kind of the signboard of the pharmacy. During the periods when there is no intense sun lighting on the facade, individual crosses are illuminated with built-in LED lighting in bright green color. Finally, the facade installation also significantly improves the energy performance of the new building and, despite the wide glazed openings in the base facade of the building, it is almost 0 consumer building, according to the actual energy efficiency calculation.
