Radovljica Regional Rescue Centre

With the construction of the deepened section of the Gorenjska motorway past Radovljica, the more or less natural eastern boundary of the town of Radovljica, which was defined by agricultural land of the first category, was psychologically and economically destroyed. The wide green belt created a much-needed vegetation buffer between the settlement and the noise and emissions-intensive infrastructure. The series of changes of use of agricultural land to residential use in this belt is, on the one hand, eroding the settlement edge and, on the other hand, posing a serious risk of the motorway-settlement interface becoming an object of commercial interest – as happened, for example, a few kilometres further north, at the motorway exit to Bled. We believe that the wide vegetation belt that separated the original, decades-old alignment of the cross from settlements should be carefully protected in all respects and on all parts of the Slovenian motorway structure. The degradation of space, the gradual expansion of commercial and production areas along the motorway, is visible everywhere, on all four arms of the motorway crossroads. The once idyllic crossing of Slovenia through green corridors is becoming a collage of commodity centres, craft zones, warehouses and building material depots.

In a sincere desire to place a building in the precious space between the motorway and Radovljica, which changes its identity as little as possible, we have designed an architectural solution that relies more on the landscape space than on the building. The entire programme of the fire station, ambulance station, civil protection station and police station was formed into two slender, uniformly shaped lamellas, which draw on the linear vegetation breaks in the landscape for their visual and message. The lamellas are designed as a series of broken wooden panels on slender supports that address the surrounding mountain frame. The structure is unified and the rhythm consists of programmatically defined shorter and longer sections. The whole building is made of wood and has no basement. This was to emphasise the ephemeral nature of the siting and the possibility that if the buildings were to be abandoned for any reason in the future, they could be recycled or biodegraded without any lasting impact on the space.

The centre is located in close proximity to the natural heritage site of the Volčji hrib glacial moraine. The pedestrian walkways separating the rescue centre from the residential area create a new high quality recreational area directly connected to the residential area. A third building has been placed at the interface between the centre and the neighbourhood, which houses activities that, in addition to the activities of the intervention services, are also intended for the inhabitants of the local community; a gym, a club room and a multi-purpose headquarters centre that can be converted into several smaller rooms for associations.

The project is in the consultation phase of the municipal spatial plan, the competition design is kept in its entirety and will soon be the basis for further steps in the planning process.

Authors BLENKUŠ Matej, CIMPERMAN Katja, JAVORNIK Luka, CVETREŽNIK Anja, REZAR Tadej, BANKO Matic