The “specificity” of the new location for the Islamic Religious and Cultural Centre is precisely its complete lack of “specificity” – an area that is near the city centre, but abandoned and forgotten, in a fragile undeveloped state, with an uncertain urban future. Much like its historical predecessors – the case of Sarajevo mosques during the 19th century being a nearby example, where mosque complexes – built by rich donors – were the starting points, the ‘seeds’ for the development of the new parts of the city, the new complex becomes one such thing for this part of Ljubljana.

The programme of the centre consists of a religious school building, a cultural and office programme, an apartment building for the employees of the community, a restaurant, as well as the mosque, the first one to be built in Slovenia, all of them supported by car parking in the basement.

The new buildings of the centre are positioned as separate entities, autonomous buildings surrounding the central square area with a mosque in the centre of it. They are simple volumes, oriented always towards the ‘outside’ world with their respective programmes, simultaneously surrounding the mosque building and allowing views towards it from all sides through the gaps in-between them.

The mosque, sitting on and opening fully towards the square to allow for extension of the prayer space on the outside during large gatherings of congregation, is the central element of the new complex. Rather than following obvious historical precedents, as well as the recent iconographically obvious examples, it is conceived as a steel structure – a 32/32/24 metre box constructed of 1-meter (45cm) deep and only 2 (8cm) centimetre thick steel latticework, filled with white concrete on the lower part, and transparent glass on the upper part, allowing for the sun to flood the interior space.

The cupola – the central element of the mosque – rather than topping the space, hangs suspended within its interior. As a representation of the sky in historical examples – it is made of transparent blue textile, the flimsiest and most fragile of materials, the material which in Islam has a long and rich history – starting from the Kiswah of Kaaba to the portable tent-mosques of Iran.

Bevk Perovic

The post Religious and Cultural Center was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

Z33 belongs to the Beguinage of Hasselt, a monument and a part of the city. The historical complex resembles an island in the urban tissue, due to the exceptional size of the void and for the permanency of its border through history, an incongruous but continuous system of brick constructions. Z33 is part of this wall of buildings around the park. The park is the centre.

The design aims to promote it as a place of rest, with a different sound from the bustling of the city centre. The protection is given by the layering of the built border with its varying degrees of privacy: the park, the Begjinhof gardens, walls and gates, the plants and the herbs, the almost blind wall of the Jenever Museum and its silent chimneys, the modern severity of Vleugel’58, the solid opening of the Poortgebouw.

The house for contemporary art is one building made of two: the exisiting Vleugel ’58 and the extension building.

Vleugel’58 will remain a sequence of “chambres d’exposition”, a classical infrastructure of room with fine proportions and a certain degree of anonymity. The extension building is an ensemble of simple rooms that vary in size, proportion and light atmosphere and that overlook each other through the others: the complexity of the spatial pattern echoes the multiplicity of experiences of a city, with gradients between public and private, exposed or intimate.

The facade is the most delicate part of the project: it is the expression of the “house” towards the street.

The facade is bound to the brick architecture of the context: a continuous traditional solid masonry with variations in colour and size of both bricks and joints. It is an innovative construction of a double solid wall: an interior warm structure coupled with an exterior cold structure, which has movement in relation to temperature variations.

The design sets the goal of the construction of a solid façade in line with the traditional masonry, developing a solution, which is congruent and feasible with the technical knowledge and production possibilities of the present day.

This can be achieved by building the exterior wall of the façade as a solid composite reinforced brick-mortar wall, reducing to a mimimum the quantity of dilatation joints.

Walking along the street people experience the quietness of a long solid brick wall and a few openings from which one is overlooked by leaves and branches.

Francesca Torzo

The post Z33 House for Contemporary Art was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.