The vast Merina factory was developed from the original factory of the industrialist Tiberghien family from France. The factory was built from 1906 and continued to expand throughout the whole of the 20th century to meet the current technological requirements for production modernisation. The first buildings (weaving, dyeing, washing and finishing rooms) were built as single-storey halls with sawtooth roofs and strip skylights with a cast-iron structure system. Their design was probably developed abroad, as they bore a similar architectural design to the foreign factories of the Tiberghien firm. A distinctive building from this period is the four-storey spinning mill (1909–1910, built by Diter and Bleuer), which consists of a cast-iron frame with brick walls and reinforced concrete ceilings so as to meet the requirement of a non-combustible load-bearing structure. The extension and reconstruction of the complex, designed by the Kolmóš and Braun duo from Bratislava, started as early as the 1920s. The most prominent objects of the second stage were the buildings of the power generating unit - in 1922 a new machinery house (turbogenerator house) with a historicizing facade with the company emblem with the letters TF and an even newer machinery house from 1931, designed in a purely functionalist style by the architect František Bednárik, were built. In factories, machine rooms have always been designed as monumental buildings, and these were not an exception. From the third stage of construction, the building of the waterworks from the 1960s stands out, which bears the features of functionalism with a distinctive tank element on the third floor. The only original loom from the factory is now housed in the Slovak Technical Museum in Košice. The factory premises were gradually adapted for various functions. Despite the fact that the Monuments Board decided to declare several buildings of the complex a national cultural heritage site, the Ministry of Culture upheld the declaration only in the case of the turbogenerator house in an appeal procedure in July 2021.
In September 2023, the historic turbine hall (heating plant) building, which had been declared a national cultural monument, was demolished. The developer did so despite efforts to save it.
author of the description: Katarína Haberlandová
