Warehouse No. 7 was built at the beginning of 1920s in the Bratislava port, which was undergoing modernisation at that time. The original intention was to build several multi-storey warehouses similar to this one. The total number was planned to be 10, and construction of half of them was supposed to be state-funded. But at the end of the day, Warehouse No. 7 remained the port’s only landmark of this scale, built by the international transport company Bohemia and the Bank of the Czechoslovak Legions.
The warehouse was constructed by Dr. Ing. arch. Skorkovský as a reinforced concrete construction with cast-iron-wrapped columns with mushroom slabs. This construction with its high load capacity was based on the so-called Emperger system, named after its inventor Friedrich Ignatz Emperger. Stanislav Bechyně, who collaborated with Skorkovský since the company’s beginnings in 1912, modified this construction system for the conditions of the Czechoslovak building industry. Warehouse No. 7 is most probably the oldest multi-storey building of its kind in Slovakia, although later, reinforced concrete constructions derived from the original Emperger type became quite common. Besides its unique construction, the warehouse’s architectural form is also quite extraordinary due to its three towers resembling the architectural style of palaces and sacral buildings. During the bombing of the port and the nearby refinery of mineral oils called Apollo in 1944, the warehouse was severely damaged. After the war, in 1947 – 1948, it was reconstructed by the Skorkovský company, which at that time was already under state administration. The warehouse became a national cultural heritage site in the 1980s, but after 1989 it became abandoned and started to decay. In 2007 – 2008 it underwent yet another reconstruction based on the projects of the A1 ReSpect studio led by architect Branislav Kaliský. Today (2021), another stage of conversion of the warehouse into a new, cultural and social centre is underway.
Bibliography:
HUSÁK, Vladimír: Technické múzeum pre Bratislavu. Projekt 32, 1990, 5 – 6, s. 40.
HABERLANDOVÁ, Katarína: Jedinečný príklad aplikácie moderných rámových konštrukcií v Bratislave (Zimný prístav: Sklad č. 7). Architektúra & urbanizmus 40, 2006, 3 – 4, s. 189 – 205.
HABERLANDOVÁ, Katarína: Industriálna klasika na brehu Dunaja. ARCH 12, 2007, 12, s. 32 – 35.
HABERLANDOVÁ, Katarína: Od technickej krásy k estetike moderny a späť. Architektúra & urbanizmus XLVIII, 2014, 3-4, 250 -270.
