FRANCE BEVK PUBLIC LIBRARY
LOCATION
Nova Gorica, Slovenija
CLIENT
Ministry of culture RS, Municipality of Nova Gorica, Fundation Soros
PROJECT YEAR
project 1995 - 1996
construction 1996 - 1999
ARCHITECTURE OFFICE
Ravnikar - Potokar arhitekturni biro d.o.o.
ARCHITECTURE
Vojteh Ravnikar, Robert Potokar, Maruša Zorec
PROJECT TEAM
Vojteh Ravnikar, Maruša Zorec, Robert Potokar, Drago Štefanec, Miha Kajzelj
PROJECT OF INTERIOR DESIGN
Robert Potokar, Maruša Zorec, Damjana Zaviršek – Hudnik
PHOTOS
Damir Fabijanić
With the completion of the Regional Library building in Nova Gorica, the city’s central public space is brought to completion and fully defined. The built edge enclosing and delineating the representative square originally conceived as the civic centre of the newly planned city is thus completed.
The diagonal of Erjavčeva Street, which, through its deviation from the orthogonal logic of the planned city, expresses its connection to a broader spatial and historical context, is inscribed into the corner of the Nova Gorica Library. The building thus symbolically terminates an axis—a kind of spatial umbilical cord—linking two important reference spaces of the two cities: Travnik in the historic centre of Gorizia and the “Travnik”, the representative public square in front of the municipal palace in Nova Gorica.
A particular set of circumstances and the course of history gave rise to the phenomenon whereby the historic Travnik in Gorizia acquired its counterpart in Nova Gorica. The latter’s name—Travnik, literally meaning “meadow”—derives from the fact that the square was originally covered with grass. Due to the time gap between the urban planning concept and its implementation, the city’s central public space remained an open, grass-covered area. Over time, inhabitants embraced this landscape, and it eventually became embedded in local toponymy.
The new library is inserted into the urban structure of the city as the culmination of its orthogonal planning strategy, while at the same time remaining connected to the organic green landscape of the surrounding hinterland, into which it extends through a more fluid and formally less constrained geometry.
The resulting spaces, unified by the theme of arcades derived from the arcade corridor of the municipal assembly building, complete and reinforce the urban structure of the city centre.
