Architects:OFIS Architects

Area:359m²

Year:2024

Photographs:Janez Martinčič,Tomaž Gregorič

Lead Architects:Rok Oman, Špela Videčnik

Project Team:Janez Martinčič, Andrej Gregorič, José Navarrete Jiménez, Chiara Girolami, Katharina Felix, Sara Carciotti, Mariangela Fabbri, Ariane Micard

City:Ljubljana

Country:Slovenia

Text description provided by the architects. In one of the areas of former Ljubljana suburbs, where bourgeois houses were built during the interwar period, stands an unusual hybrid. The original house with its cubic volume, typical of the early modernism of the 1930s, with semicircle fringes and scanty details stretches towards the garden with its modern addition - a light floating pavilion. The pavilion uses the original volumes' curvatures as a formal starting point, but we can tell by its expression the unmistakable continuity of works from Ljubljana architectural studio Ofis. When clients and architects met for the first time the house was far from its former glory.

An adaptation in the 1980s crowned the originally flat roof with a classic slanted roof and deprived the building of a large part of its former elegance. The first part of the renovation was to return the original qualities of the house. The roof was removed and a smaller terrace floor was added, which organically finishes the existing volume. The central architectural challenge of the renovation was the connection of the house with its extensive garden which is more than twice the area of the footprint of the building.