Who among us hasn't once dreamed of dropping everything and... living on top of a tower? Sound like a fairy tale? In Wroclaw it's quite real. Where once only pigeons looked down from the reinforced concrete skeleton, today life is vibrant - you can smell the coffee, hear conversations about art and architecture, and at the top.... someone is just washing dishes overlooking the city skyline. This story, however, doesn't begin with a fairytale royal, but with an architect - Eliza Suder - who chose to fight for a forgotten monument instead of a new project. Meet the E64 Tower!
Revitalization is nowadays, very rightly, a river topic. Museums and art galleries, apartments and even shopping malls are being built in historic spaces. Typically, revitalizations are carried out in buildings that witnessed the industrial revolution of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, there are plenty of buildings with a slightly shorter history waiting to be developed, whose revitalization potential is still poorly recognized. These include not only grandiose, modernist buildings such as the Cracovia and Forum hotels, but also much smaller structures - small commercial pavilions, park gazebos or...water towers. In one of about twenty such structures, preserved in the area of Wroclaw, a great metamorphosis took place, thanks to which Tower E64 was born. What was its history and what is hidden in its reinforced concrete skeleton?
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
happy turns of fate
The whole project began back in 2015, when the city announced a tender for the sale of the railroad water tower at 64 Elblaska Street in Wroclaw. The nearly 40-meter-high, octagonal structure, built in 1952, once supplied water to the nearby Wroclaw-Gądów station and - partially - to the nearby Kuźniki estate. Since 1990, when it ceased to be in use, it slowly fell into disrepair, surrounded by an estate of low-rise row houses from the 1970s. In 1994, the PKP, which manages the building, decided to brick up the entrances and lower windows - from then on, the interiors of the tower on Elblaska Street were visited only by pigeons. There were plans to demolish it, although eventually, just before the sale, the conservator entered it in the register of monuments.
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
Finally in 2016 it fell into good hands - the tender was won by Eliza Suder, a Wroclaw-based architect, owner of SHI Pracownia Architektoniczna and POCO Galeria. She had ambitious, albeit unusual, plans for the run-down tower - a café, an art gallery, an architectural studio and an apartment were to be placed inside. Finding an idea for the space, however, was only the beginning of a very long road, which ended only late last year.
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
a problem of priorities
From the very beginning, the adaptation of such an unusual structure posed problems. The tower, unused at the time for more than 20 years, was in good technical condition, for which its reinforced concrete structure was responsible, but a lot of work was required to bring its interiors up to code. When this was finally accomplished, the team moved on to design work, and then execution work, which also proceeded not without problems:
Executively, the biggest problem was determining the order of work, especially in the crown of the tower. We stood with some of the work for several months at a time, wondering together with the constructor Wanda Ilków and the site manager Pavel Grid what to do first - demolish the windows, pour the lintels or the highest ceiling in the crown. What to pour so that the walls would maintain the stability of the high curtain walls at a height of more than 20 meters. Design-wise, the biggest problem was the inventory of the octagonal building, lasers, eccentrics and angle irons helped, but in many situations it was necessary to make templates, every element here is deviated vertically and horizontally. Designing on an octagon proved to be a design difficulty. I realized that over the years of designing I was used to rectangles.
- Explains Eliza Suder, owner and designer of the E64 tower
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
The entire project was closely supervised by a conservationist, with whom decisions were consulted at every stage. Finally, after four years of work, the construction came to an end. They resulted in the creation of a multifunctional space with an area of about 450 square meters, distributed over several floors, crossing the tower from the basement to the upper parts of the crown.
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
living at the top of the tower
At the core of the E64 tower, according to the original plans, there was a café (you can meet the owner there behind the bar!), an architectural studio and the POCOgallery, which moved here from Nadodrze. There was also room for additional rooms, such as a small conference room, which already hosts various events.
The E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
Above them, in the octagonal crown of the tower, a two-story apartment was planned. At the base of the crown was a living space, with a kitchen and living room of about 110 square meters. Above, on the second level, the architect designed two bedrooms, each equipped with a separate bathroom. The roof has also been developed, where a viewing terrace has been arranged, fenced with transparent barriers to ensure safety, without disturbing the visual dimension of the building. The facade underwent minor changes, with several large vertical glazings, which allowed to illuminate the industrial interiors.
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
All floors can be accessed in two ways - by elevator and a new staircase surrounded by an industrial grid. Both of these structures were located inside the tower. What's more, none of the modifications introduced by the architect grow beyond the outline of the original structure. So from the outside, not much has changed - except for piercing the windows in the crown, the structure has been insulated and covered with light plaster.
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
history written in reinforced concrete
Although the E64 tower is a brand new site, its interiors are a strong reminder that they are in a converted building with a history of more than 70 years:
We wanted to leave as much as possible of what is the original fabric, the post-war reinforced concrete and brick. At the first meeting with the conservator, I got a suggestion to keep the inner walls of the crown of the tower, the circular walls of the tank. At first I couldn't reconcile this with my vision of the arrangement, but in the end practically the entire living space is covered with a ceiling resting on fragments of the internal structure of the tank. Their layout remained legible, and the historic fabric became part of the arrangement.
- explains the architect.
The E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
As the architect explains, all structural elements of the building have been properly exposed. For example, around the inner face of the tower's walls stretches the original staircase, preserved in about 60 percent. In the higher parts of the building they are replaced by a steel spiral structure, which has also been cleaned and properly preserved. The beams supporting the ceilings and the bricks filling the walls are also well visible. In the living area, on the other hand, there are fragments of the round walls of the former tank, and in the basement - a reinforced concrete furnace.
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
eclectic mix
The way the interiors have been decorated is also part of the vision - as Eliza Suder describes, they are primarily eclectic, combining brutalist elements, minimalist aesthetics and vintage. The furniture and other furnishings filling these spaces were collected by the architect over the years. The result is a set of individual interiors in an industrial shell, each of which, depending on its function, is a slightly different take on adapting old industrial structures to modern standards.
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
the conservator is not as bad as he is painted
Recycling, circularity and adaptations of disused buildings may prove to be the wisest path for the development of architecture in the coming decades. While such practices are gaining popularity, they are most often the result of complex projects led by large investors. However, it turns out that the adaptation of a historic building is a task that is also within the reach of entities with smaller resources. What's more, working with historic buildings is not always fraught with problems of a conservation nature, but can instead offer a number of simplifications that one would vainly expect when erecting buildings from scratch:
Don't be afraid of the preservationist. Many residents of Wroclaw are gripped by stress at the mere mention of "conservator" or "register of monuments." Of course, there are certain limitations associated with conservator's protection, but also a huge number of possibilities. In the case of adaptation of historic buildings, we are not always able to achieve full compliance with the Technical Conditions Act. Thus, when remodeling an object in the register of historical monuments, we can count on various derogations, concerning, for example, the number and height of steps, the width of doors, or the size of parking spaces accompanying the structure. At the same time, we are doing something very useful. Building a tower from scratch may be spectacular, but saving a historic building has a much greater value for the city, its architecture and history, and most importantly for the residents, their memories and sentiments!
- Eliza Suder concludes.
E64 tower in Wroclaw
© Eliza Suder
