The heating plant was built during the war in the 1940s in the industrial part of the town, on the land of the Apollo mineral oil refinery. It consisted of several buildings of different architectural expression, which were built gradually, in accordance with changing technologies. A complex of buildings connected to the oldest parts - the boiler house and the turbine hall - was created. By the 1970s, they had built two more turbine halls, a waterworks, a transformer station, as well as a second boiler house with a substation and a control room, circulating pumps and an oil house. The dominant feature of the site was the chimney. The central cubic building of the boiler house with its lattice facades has a unique form with the suggestion of avant-corps extending beyond the crown cornice and forming an element of corner towers giving the impression of castle architecture.
The authorship of the designs of the heating plant is usually attributed to Dušan Jurkovič, who cooperated with ZSE (Western Slovakia Power Plant) in the 1940s, but in fact there is no concrete evidence for his authorship so far and it was not confirmed even by the architectural and historical research of the premises in 2008. Today, the heating plant is a part of a new district with high-rise buildings (SKY PARK). The boiler house is covered by a flat roof with a skylight, supported by a steel truss. The original machinery (boilers) were dismantled some time ago, but the coal hoppers remain and form a key industrial element of the revitalised area. The revitalisation design was created by the ADOM.M STUDIO studio (architect Martin Paško). The reconstruction of the facades and roof cladding was provided by the PAMARCH studio (architect Pavol Pauliny). During the renovation, a new, separate five-storey glazed modern building was inserted into the object, where the BASE coworking space will be created (interior design by studio Perspektiv).
Bibliography:
FAŠANGOVÁ, Ľubomíra: Poznámky k revitalizácii bratislavskej Teplárne. Projekt 46, 2004, 5 – 6, s. 25.
ŽALMAN, Peter: Revitalizácia bývalej bratislavskej teplárne od Dušana Jurkoviča. Projekt 46, 2004, 5 – 6, s. 20 – 24.
GOJDIČ, Ivan – TIMKOVÁ, Michaela: Bratislava – Tepláreň I. Architektonicko – historický výskum. Bratislava, PÚ SR 2008.
SZALAY, Peter – BOGÁR, Michal - HABERLANDOVÁ, Katarína – BARTOŠOVÁ, Nina – KRIŠTEKOVÁ, Laura: Vojnová Bratislava. Bratislava, Vydavateľstvo PT Marenčin 2019, s. 281-282.
