Mirje apartment building

By amending the municipal spatial plan in 2016, the Municipality of Ljubljana relaxed the urban planning conditions for building in the previously relatively conservatively protected areas of the Rozná dolina, Tabor, Mirje, lower Bežigrad and lower Šiška. The potential level of built-up, which has increased by more than 100% in relation to the legally constructed existing building morphology, has triggered an intense wave of new buildings and a consequent transformation of the identity of these urban areas. The so-called villa districts, which are in fact very few in terms of the quality of architecture in Ljubljana, have begun to transform from mainly two- or three-storey houses for extended families and subtenants into classic multi-apartment housing estates. The challenges faced by the architects entrusted with the wave of “new-builds” were to mitigate the otherwise permitted “overdevelopment”, to protect the intimacy of the existing villa gardens, to reflect on the architecture of the liberal economy, and to ask what the real long-term future of these urban areas might be. In this respect, the role and potential of the architect and the urban planner are much more different than they should be in this case. The fact that in 2018 the municipality partially tightened the urban planning conditions with a new amendment to the OPN, mainly on the basis of protests by local residents, exacerbates the problem.

The project aimed to highlight two key themes. The relationship between the permanent and the collective, and the mutable and the individual. The basic building volume is conceived as a solid, simply shaped shell, opening mainly towards the larger frontage and the street, while closing towards the surrounding gardens. The interior allows for a high degree of flexibility in the floor plan of the dwelling, as the construction is entirely perimeter and the installations are reduced to two installation verticals. The main body of the building is clad in an anonymous white limestone stone facing, the surface variety is defined only by the varying degrees of surface treatment.

Six prefabricated steel balconies are suspended relatively freely from the main body, reflecting the individuality and dynamism of the current period of the early 21st century. centuries.

With the building, we wanted to represent the tensions between tradition and resistance, development and capital, which have been stimulated and economically created. Even if it is a project that in all respects fulfils its urban planning expectations, i.e. occupies the entire available economic volume, it opens up a duality of interpretation and ambiguity of spatial development, both in its creators and in its image.

Authors of the project: BLENKUŠ Matej, CIMPERMAN Katja, CVETREŽNIK Anja, VALENČIČ Grega, REZAR Tadej