Architecture News Plus (ANP) – Architecture and Design Magazine

Condominium Trnovski Pristan

This is a project by SADAR + VUGA and it is located at Ljubljana, Slovenia. There are seventeen images for Condominium Trnovski Pristan.

: © Hisao Suzuki

Project images

Designer's statement

Condominium is a two-floor apartment building with fifteen individualized apartments, common entrance lobby, interior winter garden and exterior summer atrium.

Its basic volume is agitated, partitioned and non-monolithic, which allows for optimal illumination of all apartments and a connection of interior area with the exterior through greater greened terraces, consoled balconies and winter gardens. The partitioning of the basic volume continues to the irregular rhythm of the balconies volume. The balconies extend far away from the building, towards the circumferential garden. The partitioning reaches its peak by the composition of façade surfaces made of pixels of multi-coloured ceramic tiles, and pre-dimensioned black metal frames, which link shown-up windows and balconies of orange wood.

The desired final effect of the facade at the apartment block known as condominium trnovski pristan was developed through a technique of pixelization: namely, we were aiming to achieve something which at first glance might seem like something beyond the imagination. We shift the perception of the size of the building in the eyes of the observer (that is why from the outset the building seems unfamiliar) and at the same time we try to establish a completely new generative relationship between the building and its immediate surroundings.

The large window openings with their wide black frames interconnect between themselves, thus creating what appears to be a heavy structure for the building's framework. The interconnecting window openings seem to fragment the volume of the building as if they were supporting part of the building, which of course is nonsense. Between this heavy structure of the window frames we stretch a light membrane made of ceramic tiles, in such a way that pixelization softens the edges between the dark windows and the bright, light ceramic membrane.

By day, when because of the sunlight reflecting on the windows, the glass surfaces of this heavy structure seem dark, the black pixels of the ceramic tiles soften the edges binding them to the light ceramic membrane. A distant view of the building enhances the effect.

The brighter pixels (mostly yellow) of the ceramic tiles start re-establishing a dialogue with the “natural pixels" made of willow leaves and the rest of greenery along the quay. This way the so-called "salamander house" adapts and generates a new context in its surroundings.

Client: Begrad, Novo Mesto
Location: Trnovski Pristan, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Site Area: 4640 m2
Building Area: 1365 m2
Total Floor Area: 4010 m2
Storeys: Basement + Gf + 2 Storeys
Structure: Reinforced Concrete
Cladding: Ventilated Facade, Ceramic Tiles On Alu Plates, Alu Double Glazing
Architect: Sadar Vuga Arhitekti (Jurij Sadar, Bostjan Vuga, Tina Hocevar, Miha Pesec, Tadej Zaucer, Mojca Kocbek)
Structural Engineers: Elea
Service Engineers: Te Biro (Mechanical & Electrical)
Landscape Design: Andrej Strgar
Traffic / Site Engineer: Gasper Blejec
Construction Cost: Eur 4 Million
Construction: June 2002 – March 2004
Photo: Hisao Suzuki, Ramon Prat, SVA Archive