The Grau Gardens project comprises two newly planned and built residential buildings and the conversion with a change of use into a multi-family building of the former 19th-century Heimann Foundation Shelter and Orfanage at Gdańska Street in Wrocław.
The area of the investment is surrounded by a downtown quarter development, shaped on the basis of plans from the 1920s and 1930s.
In the south-western corner of the plot, there is a neo-Gothic building of the former care facility of the Heimanns' foundation, erected in 1881-1884 according to the design of a well-known Wrocław architect Albert Grau, on the area then located outside the administrative borders of the city, before the final parceling out. The park-like character of the area, different from the neighbouring buildings, is related to the historical development, which included a garden accompanying the institution.
The outbreak of the war interrupted the process of urbanisation of the area, as a result of which Gdańska Street constituted a boundary between the complex of pre-war quarter buildings (locally supplemented after the Second World War) and undeveloped areas to the east. The trapezoidal outline of the plot was finally established after 1945, with the location of the Provincial Mental Health Clinic for children in the preserved building of the Heimanns' factory.
The spatial composition of the investment reflects the original urban layout from the period when the Heimanns' foundation building was situated axially within a smaller plot, separated from the eastern part of the area by a communication route. Three zones have been created in the project: the existing historic building with its immediate surroundings, the rear garden-park, and the new development along the eastern boundary. The historic building and the new development, united by greenery, are framed by an elegant openwork fence running around the perimeter of the plot - a historically justified element which plays the role of organising the space and its atmosphere, rather than having an exclusively separating function.