In the design of industrial and commercial buildings, the representation of corporate identity is often entrusted to an envelope conceived independently from the construction logic. In Gliwice, Poland, Robert Konieczny KWK Promes reverses this principle with Gambit Office, a building combining offices, storage and order preparation, in which form, material and programme are brought together within a single architectural concept. The reference derives directly from the client’s business, specialising in the distribution of pipes, transforming the image of the stored material into the compositional principle of the entire complex.
The project originated from a precise requirement: to create a representative building while keeping costs as low as possible. This condition initially led to the idea of using the same pipes distributed by the company for the façade, materials that were readily available to the client and immediately recognisable. The architecture was thus conceived as a large stack of cylindrical elements, capable of directly communicating the company’s industrial identity without resorting to graphic devices or decorative additions.
The volumetric configuration responds simultaneously to the functional programme and the surrounding context. The site was previously occupied by a rectangular industrial building, while the neighbouring urban fabric consists mainly of houses with pitched roofs, often accompanied by elongated ancillary volumes with simple geometries. KWK Promes interprets this condition through a building fragmented into several parts, maintaining a compact frontage towards the street while adopting a more articulated scale towards the residential neighbourhood.
The building’s three main functions are directly legible in its form. The two-storey volume with inclined walls accommodates the offices, a lower section houses the order preparation area, while the taller cubic volume contains the unheated warehouse. The differences between these elements, however, are not treated as a simple juxtaposition of functional volumes, but are brought together into a unified composition through the continuity of the envelope.
The pitched roof also derives from the arrangement of stacked pipes. The angle geometrically determined by their stacking is adopted as the roof pitch and transferred directly to the building. Its form therefore emerges from a direct relationship between the commercial product and the architectural structure.
The metal surface gradually changes its appearance through exposure to the elements, developing a matt patina over time. The cladding is therefore not conceived as an immutable finish, but as a material capable of registering the ageing process of the building. This choice also reflects an approach to sustainability based on durability and management, in which reducing maintenance requirements plays a significant role throughout the building’s life cycle.
The ground-floor workspaces, designed for the employees’ daily activities, receive natural light through conventional openings overlooking a small garden created within the parking area. On the upper floor, where storage and ancillary spaces are concentrated and where the walls needed to remain unobstructed to ensure greater flexibility in the internal layout, natural light is provided primarily through skylights.
The central theme of the project, however, remains the integration of functions that are often treated separately in industrial buildings. Offices, storage and operational areas are neither organised as independent volumes nor according to the conventional distinction between a representative front and a productive rear. Instead, KWK Promes brings the entire programme together through a shared formal and material language, aligning the company’s identity with the building’s operation and using economic, regulatory and construction constraints as integral elements of the architectural composition.
CREDITS
Project: Gambit Office
Architects: Robert Konieczny KWK Promes
Location: Gliwice, Poland
Year: 2024
Photography: Juliusz Sokołowski
