The end of Tržaška, the west access road into the center
of Ljubljana, is burdened with many partially realized attempts
of urbanization, never definitive or with enough inertia for
real implementation. The energy of the decades after World
War II was primarily focused on the access road from the north,
the other access roads were neglected and today still present
a strong suburban or perhaps even rural impression. An anecdote
said that the reason of urbanization of northern directions
was that the investments were concentrated along the roads
former mastermind of the Communist Party Edvard Kardelj took
from the airport to his home when returning from Belgrade.Thus,
local politics was always able to brag about new development
and probably buy peace and existence. The north side of the
end of Tržaška road near the city center is defined by the
large complex of Tobacco Factory, which should have been strongly
redefined by now, with investment in administrative and residential
towers, but the economic crisis and the induced fall in demand
for real estate stalled the project. The south side is a compositional
chaos of correctly and incorrectly positioned volumes and
larger voids. We received some real interests of property
owners in this area and parties interested in moving into
the area to participate in the process of finding appropriate
compositional solutions of the entire area, and establish
an appropriate setting for entry into the city center of Ljubljana
Upon checking the ownership and urban elements we a prepared
a stronger linear composition along Tržaška road, which at
its end and turn towards Aškerčeva road ends with a more elevated
and centric composition of an entrance dominant. Behind, a
new block for the Faculty of Civil Engineering is arranged
on an empty lot, and the Central Technical Library is oriented
to the spacious new Student Square. There was an interest
to house a hotel in the building closest to the city centre,
while the linear building along the road could house student
homes and apartments for doctoral students. The volume of
interest was already approaching the point when talks regarding
financial structure could start. However, times were not favorable
for investments at the time, and the project stalled. We were
not the first to have dealt with this space and obviously
not the last.
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