Office building on the Dolgi most, Ljubljana

In the 1980s, the Ljubljana Bypass “cut” into the spatial structure of the city, generating a series of synergistic points of spatial development at the intersections of traditional urban inroads and the motorway ring. The Long Bridge, where Slovenia’s oldest motorway joins the city’s transport network, has witnessed a gradual transformation from a service backwater to an expansive urban development hotspot over forty years of transformation. The location of a public P+R car park system, linked to a vibrant public transport network, will also make a major contribution to this.

The development of facilities in the vicinity of the Imparo office and warehouse building over the last decades shows that the fate of this part of the city is far from certain. There is a migrant assembly centre, a housing stock residential neighbourhood, several manufacturing plants, but at the same time a growing service sector with a focus on the industrial sectors 21. centuries.

Due to the typical moorland parcelling, defined by very long and parallel plots, the land selected for the proposed development is set back from the main access road towards the edge of the landscape park. The narrow access and the narrow, yet long plot have resulted in a building type that is compact and compact on the ground floor, but on both floors and in the attic it is divided into two longitudinal lamellae with central atriums. The ground floor is dedicated to warehousing and retail activities and customer contact, while the extension is designed to provide the best possible working conditions for users in a less attractive area of Ljubljana.

Several commercial units are grouped around two slender central atriums. The distances are so short that they encourage conversations and meetings between employees of different companies, in a space that is completely removed from the post-industrial environment of the suburbs. Looking inwards is therefore more pleasant and peaceful than communicating with the outside world. The façade envelope is articulated by the rhythm of the façade construction, the number of windows is reduced to a functional minimum, and the colour rhythm of the industrial façade relates to the vibrant contrasts of the flowering marsh meadows. The façade envelope is extremely energy efficient, with heat losses and gains minimised.

The floor plan allows for subdivisions and grouping of individual commercial units around three stair cores. The functional organisation allows a wide variety of configurations to be leased, from a four-storey office unit centred on a common staircase, through individual functionally complete floors, to micro-office units for start-ups and foreign representative offices. On the northern and southern edges, both building ranges are finished with full-wall glazing. The southern view towards the Ljubljana Marshes is particularly outstanding. At the top, the building is topped by three articulated building bodies with their own larger terraces.

The construction of the office building was completed during a high-profile construction crisis. In the early years of the lease, it was confronted with pressing issues of economic sustainability. Despite the turbulence, today it provides a home and business space for bright and successful companies in the fields of information technology, automotive and industrial automation. With the redevelopment of the Dolg Bridge into a promising service hinterland for the city of Ljubljana, we can sincerely expect to see a steady proliferation of related building types in the surrounding area.

Authors of the project: BLENKUŠ Matej, FLORIJANČIČ Miloš