Daugavpils High School of Art and Design building complex

The street, making a curve around the land plot, is named as Daugava Street and the river Daugava casts a circle around the city from the east through the south to the west. The same path from the east through the south to the west also is doing the sun, and Daugavpils Art and Design High School carries the Solar School name. All these considerations are so clear and easy to understand, that the search for another leitmotif for art school design did not seem logical.

Translation of Latvian ancient Folk song:

The land I wanted to get,
The land I got:
Around the river flows,
In the middle the sun plays.

Solar path in the sky, Folk songs, writings and in lives of people, the orange morning sky in the east, white blue in the noon and pink sunset has became as an inspiration for the architectural image.

The new building volumes has arranged, that they are functionally connecting three existing buildings - the Art school building, the school auxiliary building and currently unused office building on the corner of Institute and Saules street. As a result, the new building volumes are proportional to the existing urban scale in a view from any point on the adjacent streets and courtyards. New volumes are designed fairly neutral with white walls and a little hopping rhythm of window openings, as it would suit to the art school. A different scale is already established by the surrounding buildings in a skyline views from the bridge across the Daugava River as well as from the Daugava Street, where the city silhouette requires larger, clearer and more uniform size. In these panoramic views, it is more important that the building will be recognizable and its image is clearly readable. Therefore, parallel to the Daugava Street, for the School building complex is designed a curved wall, which, with its material and color palette symbolizes the motto of the design – the river Daugava circles and sun path in the sky. This wall is intended from partially transparent glass profiles, colored in reddish yellow sunrise shades on the eastern end, light white shades of the south in the middle and the pink sunset colors on the west end. The wall design is based on a Solar School nature and becomes as its symbol.

On the wall it is also anticipated the decorative printing – the artistic interpretation of Latvian characters, thus emphasizing the art schools and the art`s as a whole national, mental and semantic nature and mission. Yes, I will not deny - there is some influence of my love to Folk songs and also the conviction that such symbols must be located particularly in Daugavpils urban environment and art school`s building is a very suitable for it.

The wall in its layout shape shall comprise the existing Urban situation and required pedestrian and cycle track in a quite difficult terrain situation with Daugava street placement on the embankment by as much as six meters above the school courtyard. Therefore, the wall has a number of purely practical functions - it is anti-noise wall for the entire school complex, it is a double facade for the existing three-storey building Solar Street 2, thereby completely refreshing its architecture, it provides a shelter from wind for two courtyards, it provides a place for exhibition of school`s art works in the open air on the Daugava street front and in the end, it also serves as a supporting wall of the embankment of the Daugava Street. Wall material is semi-transparent, so nevertheless to its size, from a close distance it looks light, the courtyards and scale of the much smaller building volumes behind the facade can be felt through. But from the long range, such as from the bridge, the wall with its curved shape and skyline very well concludes the city view on Daugava bend. In the context of proposed building, the bent wall combines functionally and visually all the existing and new volumes and two courtyards, merging them in a united building complex.