Kuryłowicz & Associates

The new Head Office of LOT Polish Airlines has been located in the direct vicinity of the Okęcie International Airport. The seven-storey rectangular-plan building with the dimensions of 40 by 72 metres was constructed with a double glass façade – with the internal glass skin made from aluminium frame windows and the external glass skin fixed onto a light steel structure and slightly overhanging above the ground level. Technical platforms, which on the south side have the width enabling the creation of an additional recreational space within the thickness of the curtain wall, were spread between the load bearing elements. The adoption of such a solution ensures protection of the interiors against noise coming from the nearby airport’s runways as well as supports ventilation and air conditioning of the interiors, and from the aesthetical viewpoint it gives the effect of unusual lightness, interpenetration with the sky, of almost dematerialization of the outer shell of the building.

The interiors with the repetitive floor layout were planned out around the atria rising through the entire height of the building, which are covered the glazed roofs whose steel structure resembles the structure of aircraft wings. One of them spans over the main entrance lobby, in which on the glass surfaces the sizable logo of the owner, providing for the building’s hallmark, have been printed. The lobby’s space is cut through by the steel, covered with the hand-woven mesh, bridges connecting two wings of the building. The polished black floor of the main lobby, made from Nero Assoluto granite, intensifies the effect of reflections of light, the glass, the structure and external elements, reinforcing the impression of blurring the border between the external space and the structure of the building.

In the side atrium leading to the canteen and conference rooms the rectangular Chamber of the History of LOT Polish Airlines, finished with the glass and wooden panels with round windows, was suspended – in the air.

The floor slabs of the office floors, external walls and emergency exit staircases were left in the natural colour of row concrete. The concrete walls adjoin the completely transparent external walls. In the surface of the ceilings, in which the installations have been concealed, the exhausts of the heating and ventilations ducts as well as the recessed light sources are visible. Suspended ceilings made from perforated aluminium, which partially penetrate into the office interiors stacking in the vertical section into a profile which is similar to the section of the lower part of the passenger aircraft’s fuselage, were used in the corridors.