Port Żerań

Dom Development planned Port Żerań as seven buildings built in three phases, by the Żerań Canal near ul. Modlińska. As part of the development, the developer was also building an access road with a roundabout. Its design was prepared by another team, and PAKA.archi received it as a finished design, with fixed levels, structure and utilities that the whole development had to work around.

The road design fixed the garage ramps at lower levels than the most efficient garage layout needed. PAKA.archi designed an underground garage beneath the road, which meant reconciling the requirements for roads and for structures below them with a design PAKA.archi had not produced.

During the design, an informal car park appeared on the neighbouring plot, and the buildings had to be designed with its proximity in mind. At the same time, decisions from two design firms and several Dom Development departments had to add up to one coherent design for the development.

PAKA.archi designed the architecture of buildings B, C, D, E, F and G for KUL Architekci, the firm led by Bogdan Kulczyński. KUL Architekci were responsible for the contract with the developer, legal and administrative matters and the site layout, and designed building A. PAKA.archi was responsible for the architecture of six buildings and for coordination with the developer's departments.

Port Żerań was the first project PAKA.archi ran in BIM. The model covered, among other things, the entire underground garage: the structure, non-load-bearing walls, plumbing and electrical services. Clashes between the garage structure, the building services and the road above were resolved in the design before the documentation reached the site. By PAKA.archi's estimate, the model caught between a dozen and several dozen such clashes.

PAKA.archi coordinated the levels of the buildings, ramps and garage with the road design to keep the cost of the garage base slab down. In response to the nearby informal car park, PAKA.archi obtained a derogation from the building regulations for the development and designed acoustic barriers separating the buildings from the car park.

Construction of Port Żerań began in Q3 2017, with ERBUD S.A. as general contractor. PAKA.archi was producing the detailed design for buildings B and C while work on buildings D, E, F and G was already under way. Throughout that time, the site never stopped waiting for drawings.

The six buildings designed by PAKA.archi, with 691 apartments, made up phases I and II of the development and were completed by the end of 2019. Today the whole development, all seven buildings, is complete. Although it was built in three phases by two design firms, it reads as one whole, and some of the apartments have terraces facing the Żerań Canal.

On Port Żerań, PAKA.archi built the network of engineering consultants it still works with today, and designing in BIM became standard practice at PAKA.archi.