Production and Office Building Dubrovčan organizes the workplace around landscape and atrium
Production and Office Building Dubrovčan by MVA / Mikelic Vres Arhitekti is a new workplace and production complex in Dubrovčan, a village northwest of Zagreb. The project sits within a rural landscape that is gradually being transformed into a growing small-business and industrial zone. Built on a former construction-waste landfill, the project begins with the transformation of the ground itself, using remediation as the basis for a new topography before placing the building above it. The architecture responds to this unstable context with a precise horizontal volume that appears to rest lightly on the reshaped terrain while maintaining a constant relationship with the surrounding landscape.
Following the natural slope of the site, three planted mounds were formed across the plot, organizing pedestrian access and defining the central exterior space beneath the building. Technical, production, and shared functions are integrated within these earth forms, with their entrances oriented toward the paths that move between them. This arrangement allows the landscape to operate as part of the circulation system, while the building above is treated as a single square disk whose simplicity contrasts with the more irregular topography below.
The main volume of the workplace is organized around a circular atrium that becomes the spatial and visual centre of the project, drawing daylight and vegetation into the depth of the plan. Around it, the office environment is structured as a continuous horizontal sequence rather than a series of isolated rooms, combining enclosed workspaces with open areas, meeting points, and shared functions. Closed offices line the outer facade, while corner meeting rooms and group-work niches establish direct visual connections with the surroundings, allowing the interior to remain closely linked to the landscape throughout the working day.
Circulation is concentrated around the atrium, where the entrance, reception, hot-desk workstations, circular presentation hall, and a small auditorium form a shared internal zone that connects the different workplace functions. This central route extends toward a multifunctional common space and an outdoor terrace positioned at basement level, while a spiral staircase rises through the building to a compact rooftop pavilion, terrace, and running track. Movement through the project is therefore treated as a continuous spatial sequence that links work, presentation, recreation, and exterior spaces across several levels.
The structural system of Dubrovčan workplace reinforces this flexibility through two prestressed concrete slabs supported by peripheral V-shaped columns, four reinforced concrete cores, and freely positioned groups of inclined columns. Large spans reduce the need for internal structural divisions, allowing office layouts to be organized with lightweight, non-load-bearing, and demountable partitions that can be adapted over time. The expressed structure also contributes to the building’s visual character, giving the horizontal volume a sense of suspension above the landscape while maintaining clear structural logic.
Through this combination of remediated ground, open-plan organization, and a strongly defined structural frame, Production and Office Building Dubrovčan establishes its own spatial order within a rapidly changing context. The landscape continues beneath the building instead of stopping at its perimeter, while the circular atrium becomes a shared point between interior and exterior environments. MVA uses this relationship to soften the distinction between workplace and terrain, producing an architecture in which circulation, structure, and landscape are treated as parts of the same continuous system.
Photography by Jure Živković, with courtesy of MVA / Mikelic Vres Arhitekti
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