Ostrava’s former municipal slaughterhouse has been given new life. What was once a decaying industrial relic is now PLATO Contemporary Art Gallery, reimagined by Polish studio KWK PROMES.
The transformation is not cosmetic. It’s an act of layering history, accepting the imperfections of soot-stained brick, voids, and fractures — and turning them into opportunities. Rather than erasing scars, KWK PROMES let them guide the project, allowing art to seep beyond walls and into the city.The most radical gesture: six rotating wall panels. Their movement opens galleries to the outside, breaking the boundary between institution and public space. Art spills out, accessible even to those who might never step inside. It is a democratization of culture through architecture, a literal pivot between enclosure and openness.
The slaughterhouse’s fragile brickwork was stabilized and patched with salvaged material. Missing volumes were reconstructed in micro-concrete, a subtle counterpoint to the historic texture. Windows, too, have been reimagined: glazed with ceramic screen print, they soften incoming light, echoing the industrial melancholy of Ostrava.
Inside, walls finished in white lime plaster recall the sanitary layers once necessary for an abattoir. The atrium — once open to the sky — is now roofed, linking galleries beneath a luminous membrane supported by steel frames.
Beyond architecture, the site’s contaminated grounds have been rehabilitated. What might have become paved plaza is instead a biodiverse park, with meadows, retention basins, edible plantings, and permeable pathways. The layout traces the ghost lines of vanished slaughterhouse buildings, turning memory into landscape.
This gesture reframes the gallery as part of a living ecosystem, where art, environment, and community coexist. Residents are not mere visitors — they are participants in the unfolding process of growth and change.
For KWK PROMES, the project is less about a finished object and more about an evolving story. The revolving walls, the slow maturation of the park, and the participation of the local community all resist architectural finality. PLATO is not a monument but a platform — a place where history, culture, and ecology are in motion.
