address: Jadranska 21, Ljubljana
client: University of Ljubljana

project: 2002-2004
execution: 2004-2006

Bevk Perović project team:
Matija Bevk
Vasa J. Perović
Nika Prešeren
Robert Loher
Maja Valič

photo: Miran Kambič

New building for the Faculty of Mathematics, built in the University area of the city of Ljubljana, is not a building in a standard sense of the word. It is, in fact, an addition, a three story slab built on top of the existing two story building, containing completely different programme.

Being an edifice without the ‘ground floor’, the new building tries to develop the idea of public spaces of the school as series of transparent ‘rooms’, carved out of the building mass, hovering above the city. At first glance a formally simple architecture is precisely formulated, whether one looks at the programmatic organization or at tactile treatment of surfaces.

Elegant glass skin, screen printed with different densities of the same pattern, speaks about the programmatic structure hiding behind (different densities of print articulating different lighting conditions needed in different rooms of the school). Simultaneously, seemingly random prints appear as if they are forming together an independent, almost plastic overall surface of the edifice. Only the public and communal spaces of the school have a glass skin without prints, thus establishing a delicate conversation of the interior with the city beyond.