AFI KARLIN BUTTERFLY CZ Location Prague, Czech Republic Architect CMC Architects Kingspan Products KS1150 NF IPN panels The AFI Karlin Butterfly building stands in Prague’s Karlin neighbourhood, a former industrial area bound by the Vltava River to the north and Zizkov Hill to the south. The area has seen significant regeneration over the last decade and the offices designed by CMC Architects cater to its changing clientele. The building cuts a contemporary form against the backdrop of industrial and art nouveau architecture, with its four floors of open-planned office space sitting atop a glazed level containing shops and cafes, and a double basement for car parking. Aspects of the surroundings seep into the design. Pockets of greenery and glazing set into the aluminium-framed facade mirror the foliage on the adjacent hillside, and the undulating, butterfly-like form from which the building takes its name, responds to the existing architecture of the site. “The butterfly theme evolved as an accident of design,” explains architect David Richard Chisholm. “We first assimilated the diagonals of the school nearby, then morphed that into memory of the machine factory which previously occupied the site and eventually pulled the green down from Zizkov Hill behind to make it a living organism. It is in fact a product of the phenomenology surrounding it.” The result is a grouping of four ovoids connected by concave walls, and it is precisely these contours that made cladding the building one of Kingspan’s most challenging projects to date. 158
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