Buy Me a River
Maša Ogrin
Between 2004 and 2011 Ljubljana invested 20 million euros in stimulating its inner city revival by renovating the embankments along the River Ljubljanica. The project includes a series of public structures and spaces including bridges, parks, a pavilion and a floating pier, designed by several architectural offices that build on Jože Plečnik’s inspired designs from the 1930s. Ljubljana has a long history of engagement with its water: 5,000-year old pile–dwellings on nearby Ljubljana marshes make it one of the first European cities to utilise bridge technology. However, up until Plečnik, the city’s attitude towards its river was to use it, not respect it.
Maša Ogrin, a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana, has worked on architecture and design projects across Europe. Her last major design project was Pop-up dom currently in Venice, focusing international attention on the young Slovenian design scene. For several years she has been an editor of Trajekt.org, a portal on spatial culture in Slovenia, and is one of the initiators of architectural magazine Praznine which was nominated for Plečnik’s medal.
Plečnik’s vision for the city, as a sequence of urban parterres with multipurpose usages, promenades, city streets and squares also included consideration of the river embankments and bridges. His walkways fly from river level to embankment and vice versa, enriching the cityscape. Now Plečnik’s bridges such as the Čevljarski Most (Cobblers’ Bridge) have been joined by new ones like Mesarski Most (Butchers’ Bridge), which was designed by Atelier Arhitekti, lending spacious urban “living rooms” to an otherwise dense city centre and complementing generous spatial interventions on the banks, such as Plečnik’s ensemble of arcades and double height market. The new Fabiani Bridge completes the inner-ring road around Ljubljana and at the same time draws pedestrians down to the river level.
Public spaces such the Breg embankment, with its auditorium on the river and a new street market held nearby, and the cascaded form of the new urban Park Špica, also designed by Atelier Arhitekti at the spike of Ljubljana Island, augment Plečniks’ Trnovski Pristan embankment, known as “Ljubljana beach”. In contrast to the narrow foot-passages such as Gledališka Stolba (Theatre staircase) and Ključavničarska ulica (Locksmith Street) this renovation scheme emphasises the original tight medieval street pattern, lending a dynamic tension to the urban fabric of the city.
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