Extension of a residential house in Rožna dolina

The villas of Ljubljana, which are scattered around the “suburbs” of pre-modern Ljubljana in Poljane, Mir, Rozhná dolina, southern Bežigrad and lower Šiška, have some common features that are uncharacteristic of modern forms of living. As single-family buildings with a single entrance, they are significantly too large for modern families with relatively few family members, they are poorly connected to the garden by their high ground floor design, and the internal structure is rigid, defined by load-bearing walls set on a ‘cross’. The interventions that their owners are making to modernise their functionality are seriously affecting the specificity, dignity and autonomy of this building typology. The addition of external staircases, the opening up of facades with the insertion of large glass openings, the step-by-step removal of internal non-load-bearing as well as load-bearing walls are erasing their identity and distinctiveness and turning them into multi-apartment sleeping rooms.

The renovation of a residential house in one of the more prominent locations in Ljubljana’s Rozná Valley was based on the principle of not interfering with the character of the bourgeois villa. All interventions in the interior are discreet, with the aim of emphasising the ambient qualities of the space, the spatial relationships and the rhythm of the existing structure. The building is elevated above a distinct service basement with the ground floor, and there is simply no connection to the garden, courtyard or any other outdoor space. The design of the steel frame, to which the timber ‘roof’ is connected, provides covered parking at yard level, with a semi-open terrace above, covered by a pergola. The pergola is covered with climbing glycine, the space in the green ring continues intuitively into the landscape of the surrounding meadows.

The pavilion is not covered by a fixed roof, as the frame is only there for shading, geometry and to support the growth of the climbers. The details are simple, the dense rhythm of the structure is emphasised, the materiality is broken down into black painted steel, the translucent glass surface of the railings and the lines of the untreated larch, which has completely greyed out over the last ten years or so.

The space under the pergola replaces the building’s direct contact with the garden. Even if he is raised from the ground, a little haughty and vain, his character is defined above all by the Tuscan casualness of a leisurely life. It is a characterful but non-invasive addition to the architecture of the old lady, emphasising its elegance and temporality, but at the same time placing it confidently in the contemporary era and its values. A project with simple forms but a strong message.

Authors of the project: BLENKUŠ Matej, FLORIJANČIČ Miloš