Ave Plaza
location: 10 Sumskaya str, Kharkiv, Ukraine
function: shopping and office center
area: 23 400 m2
status: built (2003 - 2011)
photo: Andrey Avdeenko
team: Irina Goydenko, Oleg Drozdov, Vyacheslav Zhemir, Aleksandr Zhydkov, Dmitry Zhuykov, Denis Moseyko, Aleksey Yakymenko
Located in the very heart of Kharkіv’s busy downtown, Ave Plaza inevitably became a new commercial hub of the city, attracting visitors with a variety of shops and restaurants, as well as with its striking appearance. The new building fills a gap in the historic tissue along the red line of the street, providing smooth transition between two existing scales.
Although the building has a relatively small footprint, it proves to be highly efficient due to well thought-out circulation, which provides access to numerous facilities on each of the four commercial floors.
In order to achieve maximum efficiency of the retail centre, the volume of the building is pierced by an ellipsoid atrium with a peninsular tower in the middle. The tower is occupied by a variety of restaurants, encouraging visitors to climb higher to the upper floors. The tower inside the atrium creates a lively atmosphere, without spoiling the sightlines and the entire visual perception of the interior space. Occupying one fourth of the total area, the atrium represents an allusion to a city quarter. It is topped by a roof garden on the level of the fourth floor.
