4 Cubes - High-rise residential building, N3 Koncar

The design for this building, like the design for the Banka Splitska, was also developed subsequent to the competition entry for the Novelia Split district. The building is located on a circular plaza in close proximity to a large shopping mall. It consists of two structures or four cubes: rising from a three-story base, which lends shape to the street space, is a twenty-two-story tower whose form and surface instantly catch the eye.

The tower stands on a square block whose sides measure twenty-five meters across. At first glance the tower resembles a toy consisting of three cubes that have been stacked clumsily by a child—that is, not resting edge to edge but projecting here and there into space.

Indeed, stacking and layering are the true subject matter of this architecture. So much so that each one of the cubes goes on to repeat and vary the process individually. One moment the bright frames seem like the edges of shipping containers, the next moment the floor-to-ceiling, mullionfree windows seem like the broad and narrow sides of the same. The tiny projections and recesses distributed with a deliberate arbitrariness in a few areas on each of the cubes underscore this impression.

The appearance of the tower’s exterior is akin to that of the flexible structures of the Japanese Metabolists, although the apartments in the cubes are a far cry from being small capsules that can be pulled out like plugs from sockets.

There are four to eight apartments per floor, arranged around the core of the tower. They range in size from 60 to 220 square meters, and some are maisonettes. The comparison made above to the broad and narrow sides of containers applies to the double-sash, box-type windows. The ventilation of each apartment largely natural, on the one hand via sliding doors that lead to recessed balconies, and on the other via openable window panels. From the upper floors there are views of the mountains to the north, of the sea to the south, and of the harbor to the west.