BARAGA SEMINARY

LOCATION
Ljubljana, Slovenija

COMPETITION YEAR
May 2023

ARCHITECTURE OFFICE
Ravnikar - Potokar arhitekturni biro d.o.o.

ARCHITECTURE
Robert Potokar, Laura Perko, Javier Carrera Arias, Špela Ščančar, Neva Lorger, Mina Gutović, Tina Gradišer, Tanja Košuta, Andrej Stražišar, Patricija Pirc

PRIZE
Award - mention

The Baraga Seminary is currently situated within an unfavourable urban and spatial context. Successive approaches to the planning and transformation of the surrounding area have resulted in the building becoming increasingly isolated within the urban fabric, despite its original conception as a meeting point between Stara cerkev and the Žale cemetery. The urban concept of the competition proposal draws upon Plečnik’s original intentions for the positioning of the Baraga Seminary and its relationship with the Navje cemetery. The never-realised linear wing with its inner circular geometry is reinterpreted in the largest possible symmetrical configuration in relation to the existing built fabric. At the point where the two geometries intersect, and the space opens towards the city’s avenues, the Baraga Seminary complex once again assumes a central role within the existing urban block.

Throughout its existence, the building has been subject to interventions and alterations by various authors, although it is generally recognised as the work of architect Jože Plečnik. With the ambition for the new intervention to establish as subtle and respectful a relationship as possible with Plečnik’s original, unrealised concept and with the significant modernist architectural heritage of the surrounding area, the principal idea behind the extension for the Slovene Youth Theatre is based on a duality between its exterior and interior expression.

The external architecture is conceived as compact, symmetrical and visually restrained. Inserted within this calm outer envelope is a series of large auditorium volumes which, through deliberate shifts and offsets, generate a varied and dynamic interior. This multi-level foyer unfolds along the northern and western perimeter of the building, creating a continuous spatial sequence around the inserted halls.

The duality between external anonymity and internal dynamism is likewise expressed in the architecture of the extension’s façades: the outward-facing façade remains restrained and composed, while the inner façade of the atrium becomes more articulated and spatially expressive.