Five storeys on the old grain quay. Precast fins turn hard river light into an even glow across every desk.
Architecture for homes,schools and workplacesin Central Europe.
Halde is a practice of twelve architects in Bratislava. We design new buildings and careful extensions for families, towns and developers, from the first site walk to the last snag list.
Selected work
Six buildings from the last six years. Every one began with a long walk around its site and a model on our table.
38 flats around a shared garden, each with a loggia deep enough for a table of six.
A 210 m² family house built from one reclaimed brick, laid in three bonds.
A mountain house in black-stained spruce. One room under the roof, open from end to end.
A single-storey kindergarten for 120 children. Not one tree on the plot was felled; the classrooms were placed between them.
A house that steps down its hill instead of flattening it.
The plot above Modra's vineyards falls fourteen metres from road to brook. Rather than level it, we set the house in three half-levels that follow the ground, each opening onto a different stand of pines. The family moved in during the first snow.
- Client
- A family of five
- Site
- 2,100 m², 14% slope to the north-west
- Floor area
- 310 m² over three half-levels
- Structure
- Cross-laminated timber on a concrete plinth
- Facade
- Charred larch, left untreated
- Energy
- Near-zero: heat pump and 9 kWp roof
How a building comes together
Four stages, one team. The architect who draws your building on the first day is the one standing next to you at handover.
-
01 — GroundWeeks 1–3We start on the site, not on a screen.
Before any drawing, we spend a full day on your plot: where the sun falls at nine and at four, where water runs after rain, which trees must stay. The brief is written there, with you.
-
02 — ModelWeeks 4–10Every scheme is tested as a physical model.
We build two or three massing models at 1:200 and put them on the table between us. It is the quickest way for anyone, not only architects, to see what a building will do to its street.
-
03 — DetailMonths 3–9Drawings a builder can actually price.
Permit and construction drawings are made in-house, joint by joint. Every contractor bids on the same complete set, which keeps quotes close together and surprises on site rare.
-
04 — StayHandover + 12 monthsWe come back after a year.
During construction we are on site every week. Twelve months after you move in, we return to see how the building lives through the seasons, and we fix what we got wrong.
Twelve people, one long table, and no site we haven't walked.
- Founded
- 2014, in a former printworks in Staré Mesto
- People
- Ten architects, a landscape designer and a model maker
- Scale
- From 150 m² houses to 12,000 m² schools
- Fees
- Fixed for each stage and agreed before we draw a line
- Languages
- Slovak, Czech, English and German
What we do
- Architecture New build
- Extensions Old + new
- Interiors Fit-out
- Landscape and site Outdoors
- Feasibility studies Before buying
Tell us about your site.
A plot, an old building, a brief on the back of an envelope: any starting point works. We reply within two working days with next steps and an honest view of whether we are the right practice for it.
- Studio
- Panenská, Staré Mesto, Bratislava
- Visits
- Tuesday to Thursday, by appointment
- Reply
- Within two working days