Baumaxx Hypermarket, Maribor
Njiric Arhitekti- Typologies Market Commercial / Office
- Date 1997
- City Maribor
- Country Slovenia
Built along a highway as an outlet for do-it-yourself hardware items, the Baumaxx superstore in the Slovenian town of Maribor has an extensive roof garden that evokes a landscape of hills. Four large billboard structures rising overhead affirm the building’s undeniable link to the high-speed road system that nourishes large shopping centers. Both in plan and in elevation, the building celebrates traffic: several rectangular parking lots are cut out from the irregular built volume that takes the shape of the site, and reflectors resembling highway construction lighting transform the mute surfaces of the building’s enclosure into the inticing publicity of changing colors – silver from the north, red from the south, and neutral from the west. The passing driver is inevitably reminded of the Baumaxx store’s corporate identity...
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