In the new Origo building located in Riga at Satekles iela 2b, the first stage of the expanded Origo Shopping Centre has been opened to visitors, as well as Origo One Business Centre. The project will more than double the area of Origo – the first three floors of the new building will house convenient premises for shops and service providers, while the top three floors will contain innovative class A offices – Origo One. The total planned investment amount of this impressive project is EUR 75 million. Reconstruction of the A building of Origo Shopping Centre is scheduled to be completed by autumn 2020.
During the extensive project, the total area of Origo Shopping Centre has increased from 35.5 to 81.8 thousand square metres. 35.7 thousand square metres will be allocated to shopping space, and 11.1 thousand square metres will be used to house state-of-the-art class A offices and business premises – Origo One Business Centre. The construction project has also enlarged the underground car park by providing parking space for up to 130 cars, including electric vehicles, and also a spacious, secure and easily accessible bicycle parking for 66 bicycles has been built (in addition to 27 bike racks in public outdoor space). As a contribution to improving the city’s infrastructure, Linstow Center Management will soon complete work on reconstructing the intersection of Elizabetes and Satekles streets – in addition to the already built signalised pedestrian crossing there will also be a left-turn traffic light, full road surface markings and a cycle lane across Satekles Street, while also maintaining and making much safer driving for motorists. The work is to be completed by this summer.
“Currently, the first stage of the project has been finished. The expanded shopping centre building will offer an even more convenient shopping experience thanks to the extensive offering, including Rimi Hyper – the biggest grocery store in the centre of Riga, as well as brands that are beloved in Latvia like Reserved, Lindex, Euronics, Sportland, Skechers and many others. A huge work has been put in to carry out the plans. We are proud that the big changes and innovations will not only ensure a particularly comfortable working environment, shopping experience and environmental accessibility, but will certainly also provide a positive impetus for infrastructure development of the entire neighbourhood,” told Frode Gronvold, Chief Executive Officer of Linstow Center Management SIA.
The new building of the shopping centre will offer to its visitors several new shops and service providers, such as Reserved, Lindex, Sinsay, Euronics, Skechers, Smartserviss, Vizionette, Boost Juicebar, IQOS, as well as already favourite brands including the largest Rimi Hyper in the Centre of Riga, and also Drogas, Jānis Roze, BITE, Terranova, Cropp, House, Meta, Monton, Sportland, NS King, GoldLight, Elche, Eiropas apavi shops and more. Restaurants Vapiano and KFC will complement the range of catering in autumn.
The author of this ambitious construction project Uldis Zanders, chairman of Depo Projekts SIA, and architect Inga Piņķe, who is co-owner of the company, explain: “Property development in the centre of Riga always is highly complex work. The location in the city of Origo Shopping Centre and Origo One is the point of intersection of many different plans and interests. Project solutions are directly or indirectly evaluated by urban development planners, heritage protection authorities, services taking care of city streets and intersections, planners of Rail Baltica and many others whose responsibilities, work or daily life are connected with the heart of the capital. By creating the new office and shopping centre, LCM has invested large financial and human resources not only into developing its business, but also into the development of the city and improvement of its infrastructure.”
Creation of the interior design for the project has been assigned to Xcelsior SIA , an architecture and interior design company with 25 years of extensive international experience and winner of several annual prizes of the Latvian Designers’ Society. Arturs Martinsons, founder of the company and head of the particular project’s interior design, explains: “The interior of the new building represents an absolutely new image of Origo – harmonious, contemporary and sustainable. The interior project is implemented based on the most progressive trends of contemporary interior design and the client’s clear wish to have a building with the added value of high-quality design. When creating the interior image, we have included references to the historical, current and future environment of the particular location – the old Post Office building, Riga Central Railway Station and the Station Square, RailBaltica. Origo’s interior concept is based on creating a new shopping experience by likening it to leisurely travel through time and space. We selected decoration materials with the idea that they need to have a long life and be visually appealing also when aging.”
The construction work was performed by Skonto Būve SIA. Board member Juris Pētersons tells: “The new extension of Origo Shopping Centre is a good example of application of sustainable building standards both during the design stage and construction process itself. In the project we used state-of-the-art technologies and solutions that allow significant optimisation of the building maintenance costs while ensuring a comfortable indoor climate. We are grateful to the client for the opportunity to work on this project, which is an example of sustainable, high-quality, energy-efficient construction in Latvia.”
Already during the design stage, the new Origo Shopping Centre complex received the BREEAM certificate – the world’s leading sustainability assessment method – with an “excellent” rating. Taking into consideration the high requirements, particular importance is assigned not only to compliance with construction standards, but also to transparency of the design and construction process, choice of materials, their longevity, quality of indoor climate, accessibility of the site and other factors. For achieving the project’s BREEAM certification goals and managing this process, the experienced BRE Global-certified English expert Hadley Barrett has been involved.Implementers of the Origo expansion project The Origo expansion project is implemented by the Norwegian real estate development and management company Linstow Center Management in cooperation with the general building contractor Skonto būve SIA and designers – PS Arcade (architectural firm DEPO projekts SIA and Jensen Consult un Arhis inženieri SIA), and xcelsior SIA as the author of interior design. The technical supervision of construction was performed by CMB SIA, while BREEAM certification was carried out by IB&P konsultācijas SIA and Oxford Sustainable OÜ. The owner of the site is Attīstības aģentūra SIA (Linstow AS).
