Acronym Collective Studio Turns Czech Brewery Into Community Centre

Acronym Collective Studio has converted a brewery that stopped brewing in 1942 into a community centre crowned by a curved, perforated brick facade in the Czech town of Velká Bíteš, near Brno.

Named Kulturní Centrum Pivovar, or Brewery Cultural Centre, the building now contains a library, information centre, family centre, multi-purpose community hall and creative workshop spaces.

The original structure operated as a brewery until 1942. It then became storage and was converted into apartments in the 1960s. According to architect Pavel Gebauer, successive alterations had eroded the building's civic role.

"Through its scale and location, the building forms a significant part of the urban fabric," Gebauer told Dezeen. "However, successive alterations had gradually weakened both its original character and its relationship with the surrounding public space."

What does the transformation change?

The studio's central move is the relocation of the main entrance to the building's rounded corner, which faces the town square.

"The most significant urban gesture is the relocation of the main entrance to the rounded corner facing the square," said Gebauer. "This places the entrance at the building's most prominent point and fundamentally changes the way the building engages with the city."

Rather than reading as separate institutions, the programmes were designed to work as a whole. "Despite the diversity of the individual programmes, the aim was for the building to be perceived as one interconnected public house rather than a collection of separate institutions," he said.

The corner entrance leads into the information centre and a new stairwell containing a spiral stair in exposed concrete. A full-height internal window overlooks the stair and draws light into the first-floor library.

In the building's lower level, the brewery's former vaulted cellars now hold an exhibition space and the creative workshop areas. Arched windows illuminate them from a small courtyard at the rear.

How was the community hall enlarged?

The top floor houses the multi-purpose community hall beneath a gabled roof of timber slats, with grey curtains to enclose the space when needed.

Gebauer said the low ceilings of the former residential layout were inadequate for the hall. "The original layout of the former residential building was characterised by low ceiling heights, which were inadequate for the significance of the newly designed multi-purpose hall," he told Dezeen.

"By removing the existing floor structure and opening the space up into the roof structure, the hall gains an appropriate scale, spatial generosity and a more representative character."

What materials did the studio choose?

A plinth of grey brickwork defines the ground floor, contrasting with the white brick above. Perforated sections and bands of stretcher bond brick around the openings animate the facades.

Inside, Gebauer describes a "deliberately restrained" palette of exposed concrete, masonry and pale timber, selected so the spaces are hardwearing and easier to maintain.

The project joins a wave of Czech adaptive reuse: architecture studio KOGAA recently transformed a former industrial hall into an art gallery, painting the original metalwork mint green to foreground its shed-like structure.

Photography is by Alex Shoots Buildings.