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Republic Square in Ljubljana
competition design with code 26534 and “a reversal of design”
A pair of office towers rising above the bell tower of the Ursuline Church is probably the most distinctive element of the Republic Square complex in Ljubljana. This central national square of exceptional historical and symbolic significance for the Slovene nation is framed by a composition of buildings –of different design, dimensions and content– and interconnected open spaces, passages and underpasses. The monoliths with their stone facade cladding, topped by copper caps of two heights, are dynamically integrated into the city's silhouette. However, their appearance deviates in many ways from what was originally planned. The most obvious change is the difference in height. Two much taller towers, 20 storeys above the platform, were intended to frame the Monument to the Revolution, which the authorities conceived as the central symbolic focus of the area.
View from Congress Square towards the Ursuline Church and the construction site of the eastern tower of Republic Square. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, photographic collection, photo B47-040.
The view from Congress square to the Ursuline church and the eastern tower on Republic Square today. Photo Credit: Alberto Rodriguez Arias, OHS Archive
View from Congress Square towards the Ursuline Church and the construction site of the eastern tower of Republic Square. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, photographic collection, photo B47-040.
The view from Congress square to the Ursuline church and the eastern tower on Republic Square today. Photo Credit: Alberto Rodriguez Arias, OHS Archive
In 1960, Edvard Ravnikar, the most prominent Slovenian architect of the second half of the 20th century, gave a justification for such an idea in the accompanying text of the winning competition entry for the conceptual solution of the urban layout of the new square, then called Revolution Square. His argumentation of the proposed idea as an alternative to a colossal monument is ideologically bold: “The Monument to the Revolution can only be made magnificent by the architecture that surrounds it. A colossal monument alone could lead to an empty patheticism that would over time become indigestible.”
During the development of the architect's original idea and in the specific circumstances of the 1960s, which led to the suspension of construction in 1962 and again in 1964 and resulted in a change of investors, the two towers were lowered, rotated, moved to the north-east and raised above the level of the main platform. The Monument to the Revolution, whose monumentality was to be ensured by the two buildings, which were originally oriented with their sides facing each other, was relegated to the margins of the square, to the remaining trees of the former Nuns’ Garden, in which a symbol of a new society and a new era was being built.
The winning competition design with code 26534 – a cut-out showing the new Revolution Square. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
Ravnikar's competition project was accompanied by illustrations of the placement of the new complex in the context of the historic built-up area, taking into account the “period of construction”, the purpose and elevation of the existing buildings, the surrounding greenery and other areas, the existing road network and also the archaeological remains. The winning competition design of the new Revolution Square. Cut-out showing the placement of Emona. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
Photograph of a model, prior to April 1962. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01. Materials presented to the public competition of the Monument to the
Revolution.
But it would be unfair to reduce the initial idea of the most important architectural and urban work of Slovenian modernism to the framework of a monument. The Revolution Square project must be understood primarily in the context of the desire to lay out a new Ljubljana city centre, to which the efforts of the architectural profession had been devoted since the 1950s. It is undeniable, however, that the beginning – and also the planned completion – of this project, on 9 May 1965, the 20th anniversary of liberation, was permeated by the socio-political interests of the time. For example, the archival material shows that the deadline for the completion of the main buildings on the square and the erection of the Monument to the Revolution was set in a small circle, at a meeting with the Chairman of the Slovenian Executive Council, Boris Kraigher. Kraigher's role in the creation of Revolution Square has so far hardly been discussed, nor has the role of Ivan Maček, who – although trained as a carpenter – as Minister of Construction in the first decade after the Second World War oversaw Slovenian architectural production. The complexity of the situation in which Ravnikar found himself when planning the new Revolution Square can be seen from the account in the work “Edvard Ravnikar as an architectural theoretician” by the architect Fedja Košir, who was also Ravnikar's collaborator in the planning of this complex: “(...)
Without the bitter experience of Nova Gorica there would have been no Revolution Square: with it, he (i.e. Ravnikar) learns what paths revolutionary urban policy takes and wisely adapts to the circumstances.” Less known aspects of Ravnikar's Nova Gorica, the newly planned city that was to “shine across the border” after the loss of Gorizia, as well as the circumstances created by the politics and society of the time, with its values widely promoted also through the medium of art, will have to be given more space in another future discussion. At this point, let us rather mention that Family Happiness, Justice, Education, as well as workers with compressors and other tools depicting mining, electrification, the textile industry and other key areas of the former state on the allegorically rich frieze of the Palace of the People's Assembly (today's parliament building), opposite which a space had been designated for the construction of a new administrative and representative centre, were staring at a wall. For the space beyond this high wall of the Nuns’ Garden, Ravnikar proposed, as he himself wrote, “a maximum that can still be well designed” in his winning competition entry for Revolution Square, which was to address not only the positioning of the Monument to the Revolution, but also the question of the programmatic and design concept of the building of the new centre of Ljubljana.
The architect envisaged the two tall office buildings in two versions from the very beginning: with 10 or 20 storeys. He assumed that taller towers would be able to house all the “central government” administration: one the executive council and secretariats, the other the central committee and the “mass organisations”, and that these two buildings would become the new symbol of the city. “As far as the height is concerned, we consider 20 storeys to be an appropriate height, and the city's building code should stipulate that these should remain the tallest buildings within a certain radius,” the architect wrote. He also included two variants of the floor plan of the towers, one with additional “wing extensions” or “horns” at the corners of the triangle and one without. The general triadic structure immediately brings to mind the Draga burial ground near Begunje, which Ravnikar had designed a decade earlier, or the competition plan for the office building on the VII Congress Square in Ljubljana (on the site of the present-day Slovenijales building), dated the same year as the competition design for Revolution Square. However, the architect explained the choice of a triangular layout quite succinctly: “An analysis of the various forms of the layout of the tall office building shows that the triangle is the most rational. In the analysis, the core of the side rooms /.../ is always the same size and the useful area is the largest in the triangle.” He then went on to compare the areas of corridors and “useful areas” in the case of rectangular, triangular, square and pentagonal floor plans, with the core area always the same. His reflection on the optimum use of surfaces foreshadows the approach to the later design of tower blocks, the imperative of which was the rationalisation of architectural design and topological optimisation – including in the construction, in the design of which Ervin Prelog, Ph.D., at that time one of the most prominent Yugoslav experts in the field of theory and analysis of structures, played a key role.
Ravnikar also included a monument in the winning design, which was not the subject of the competition. He conceived it as a shallow pool from which three sets of water jets would emerge on special occasions, and defined it as “a monumental urban motif of three water columns of hyperboloid forms”. Other monuments to political figures are mentioned in the study, including “Tito’s monument in the large square itself”. From the photographs of the model and the ground plan published in newspapers, it is possible to see that Ravnikar had envisaged placing Tito’s sculpture in the axis of the portal of the People's Assembly building: perhaps such an emphasis was just one of the architect's pragmatic manoeuvres, as was, on the other hand, the reduction of the Monument to the Revolution to a shallow pool with water elements which, despite its declared “magnificence”, would have remained largely unnoticeable in comparison with the architectural composition itself. However, it can be seen from the competition design that he paid a lot of attention to the green belt on the western part of Revolution Square, where he envisaged a monumental area with a hexagonal mausoleum. He called it “Pantheon, the common monument of the great Slovenes”. The arrangement, which, in connection with the park in front of the museum formed the so-called “area of national piety”, was most probably connected with the aspirations to relocate the Navje memorial cemetery in the northern part of Ljubljana. It was designed by Jože Plečnik as a relic of the larger, never realised design of the Solemn Cemetery with the church named The Temple of Glory (Hram slave), for which Ravnikar also drew the plans in Plečnik's seminar.
Ravnikar's winning solution consisted of several other buildings arranged around a main north-south oriented platform, adapted for public manifestations, and three smaller squares: two to the north and west of the Ursuline church with the monastery building, and one on the east side of the presidential palace, linked with the largest one in a “spatial and visual union”. To the north of the Pension Institute block, in the “zone of the Executive Council and the Central Committee”, a hall building was to stand, dedicated to the Executive Council like one of the tower blocks. In addition, a building for the DIT (Society of Engineers, Architects and Technicians), a new gallery (Jakopič pavilion), administrative and catering facilities, services and also new sites for commerce, concentrated in the “zone of intensive daily life” at the eastern end, were planned for Revolution Square.
Between 1960 and 1962, several building variants were created, also related to the “select competition for the layout of Revolution Square”, which was completed in May 1961. It concerned the western tower of the Executive Council and was also won by Ravnikar. These plans, drawn up from 1961 by the Investment Institute for the Construction of Revolution Square (IZITR), which was set up especially for this project, vary both in the location and design of the buildings on Revolution Square and the position of the Monument to the Revolution.
Despite the numerous building variants, the essential elements of Ravnikar's original design were preserved until the start of construction in 1962, as well as after the change of investors and the subsequent changes to the original development plan. In addition to the tower blocks above the platform, the green belt to the west and the monument, finally relegated to the periphery of the architectural composition, a horizontally stretched commercial building on the eastern side of the platform and an office building designed as an extension of the street block along Josipina Turnograjska Street were added. The building, conceived as a new Jakopič pavilion and originally located north of Šubičeva Street, was later implemented as an extension to Plečnik's school building, with a bookstore on the lower floors.
Some of the facilities were not built, or the planned programmes were later housed in buildings added to the base of the towers. Instead of the stand-alone building of the House of Technology and the Central Technical Library, the latter was housed in an extension to the western tower block. The banking premises fill the extension at the foot of the eastern tower block.
View of the Nuns’ Garden and the recently built National Assembly building (today’s parliament) in 1963. Source: Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Ljubljana unit, photograph collection.
Construction work on Republic Square, 1966. Source: Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Ljubljana unit, photograph collection.
View of the commercial building construction site. Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 01.01, folder M, photo 9.
The winning competition design with code 26534 for the new Revolution Square – a cut-out showing a comparison of the “useful areas” in the rectangular, square and pentagonal floor plans of the tower and in the triangular floor plan with “wing extensions”. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
The winning competition design with code 26534 for the new Revolution Square – a cut-out showing Ravnikar’s proposal for the Monument to the Revolution. Source: Historical Archives of
Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
Plan J 30 2, June 1960, showing a building variant with a single tower. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit (roll) 04.01.
Plan J 30 3.1, July 7, 1961, marking all buildings in Revolution Square. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit (roll) 04.01.
Layout plan for the new Revolution Square, ground floor (construction phases of Annex B), April 1970. Source: SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 07.01.
The cinema in the southern part of the square, on the axis between the two towers and entirely below ground level, was to be converted into several halls of the congress centre after the work on Revolution Square was stopped. The cinema was only partially built, and later incorporated into the Cankarjev Dom Cultural and Congress Centre. The two towers, which were planned as identical buildings, were intended for official representation and administration (the western tower) and for commercial companies (the eastern tower). After a change of investor, they were allocated to the offices of Iskra Commerce and Ljubljanska banka, but they reached just over half their originally planned height.
The essence of the transformation of the complex was best summed up by Ravnikar himself when he added a comment in pencil to the text on Revolution Square in the typescript of Karl Friedrich Gollmann's doctoral dissertation (1985), dedicated to his oeuvre: “After much searching and testing, the concept finally settled on two triangular towers as the most rational in terms of the relationship between the peripheral spaces and the necessary area for the core. The final heights were set at half the original (due to the cost of technology) and especially to make them more reconcilable with the old town. The shift towards the centre of the square created two spaces separated by the masses of the two towers, which close in with the tops of the triangles forming ‘a gate to Ljubljana’ (...). The heights of the buildings are arranged according to a special plan for a unified view from the Philharmonic Hall.” Ravnikar called this transformation of the square “a reversal of design”, adding reluctantly that the richness of this reversal, which he also saw in “the effect of sun and shadow throughout the day and throughout the year”, had “not yet been captured by a photographer to show the qualities of such design reasoning.”
Zazidalni načrt za novi Trg revolucije, pritličje (gradbene faze prizidka b), april 1970. Vir: SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, t. e. 07.01.
The architectural and urban qualities of the Republic Square complex were truly enhanced by the realisation of much lower, and in addition unevenly rising towers with asymmetrical top ends and extensions differing in form, dimensions and material, as well as by the additional articulation of the central open space. Today, because of its already recognised qualities and values, it is a listed monument of national importance. Recent research has shown that not only the square as a whole, but also the towers themselves should be considered among the most important architectural achievements in our country, since they are truly pioneering approaches in design in terms of constructing tall buildings, ensuring seismic safety and topological optimisation.
In 1960, Edvard Ravnikar, the most prominent Slovenian architect of the second half of the 20th century, gave a justification for such an idea in the accompanying text of the winning competition entry for the conceptual solution of the urban layout of the new square, then called Revolution Square. His argumentation of the proposed idea as an alternative to a colossal monument is ideologically bold: “The Monument to the Revolution can only be made magnificent by the architecture that surrounds it. A colossal monument alone could lead to an empty patheticism that would over time become indigestible.”
Ravnikar's competition project was accompanied by illustrations of the placement of the new complex in the context of the historic built-up area, taking into account the “period of construction”, the purpose and elevation of the existing buildings, the surrounding greenery and other areas, the existing road network and also the archaeological remains. The winning competition design of the new Revolution Square. Cut-out showing the placement of Emona. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
The winning competition design with code 26534 – a cut-out showing the new Revolution Square. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
During the development of the architect's original idea and in the specific circumstances of the 1960s, which led to the suspension of construction in 1962 and again in 1964 and resulted in a change of investors, the two towers were lowered, rotated, moved to the north-east and raised above the level of the main platform. The Monument to the Revolution, whose monumentality was to be ensured by the two buildings, which were originally oriented with their sides facing each other, was relegated to the margins of the square, to the remaining trees of the former Nuns’ Garden, in which a symbol of a new society and a new era was being built.
Photograph of a model, prior to April 1962. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01. Materials presented to the public competition of the Monument to the
Revolution.
But it would be unfair to reduce the initial idea of the most important architectural and urban work of Slovenian modernism to the framework of a monument. The Revolution Square project must be understood primarily in the context of the desire to lay out a new Ljubljana city centre, to which the efforts of the architectural profession had been devoted since the 1950s. It is undeniable, however, that the beginning – and also the planned completion – of this project, on 9 May 1965, the 20th anniversary of liberation, was permeated by the socio-political interests of the time. For example, the archival material shows that the deadline for the completion of the main buildings on the square and the erection of the Monument to the Revolution was set in a small circle, at a meeting with the Chairman of the Slovenian Executive Council, Boris Kraigher. Kraigher's role in the creation of Revolution Square has so far hardly been discussed, nor has the role of Ivan Maček, who – although trained as a carpenter – as Minister of Construction in the first decade after the Second World War oversaw Slovenian architectural production. The complexity of the situation in which Ravnikar found himself when planning the new Revolution Square can be seen from the account in the work “Edvard Ravnikar as an architectural theoretician” by the architect Fedja Košir, who was also Ravnikar's collaborator in the planning of this complex: “(...) Without the bitter experience of Nova Gorica there would have been no Revolution Square: with it, he (i.e. Ravnikar) learns what paths revolutionary urban policy takes and wisely adapts to the circumstances.” Less known aspects of Ravnikar's Nova Gorica, the newly planned city that was to “shine across the border” after the loss of Gorizia, as well as the circumstances created by the politics and society of the time, with its values widely promoted also through the medium of art, will have to be given more space in another future discussion. At this point, let us rather mention that Family Happiness, Justice, Education, as well as workers with compressors and other tools depicting mining, electrification, the textile industry and other key areas of the former state on the allegorically rich frieze of the Palace of the People's Assembly (today's parliament building), opposite which a space had been designated for the construction of a new administrative and representative centre, were staring at a wall. For the space beyond this high wall of the Nuns’ Garden, Ravnikar proposed, as he himself wrote, “a maximum that can still be well designed” in his winning competition entry for Revolution Square, which was to address not only the positioning of the Monument to the Revolution, but also the question of the programmatic and design concept of the building of the new centre of Ljubljana.
The architect envisaged the two tall office buildings in two versions from the very beginning: with 10 or 20 storeys. He assumed that taller towers would be able to house all the “central government” administration: one the executive council and secretariats, the other the central committee and the “mass organisations”, and that these two buildings would become the new symbol of the city. “As far as the height is concerned, we consider 20 storeys to be an appropriate height, and the city's building code should stipulate that these should remain the tallest buildings within a certain radius,” the architect wrote. He also included two variants of the floor plan of the towers, one with additional “wing extensions” or “horns” at the corners of the triangle and one without. The general triadic structure immediately brings to mind the Draga burial ground near Begunje, which Ravnikar had designed a decade earlier, or the competition plan for the office building on the VII Congress Square in Ljubljana (on the site of the present-day Slovenijales building), dated the same year as the competition design for Revolution Square. However, the architect explained the choice of a triangular layout quite succinctly:
View of the commercial building construction site. Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 01.01, folder M, photo 9.
“An analysis of the various forms of the layout of the tall office building shows that the triangle is the most rational. In the analysis, the core of the side rooms /.../ is always the same size and the useful area is the largest in the triangle.”
He then went on to compare the areas of corridors and “useful areas” in the case of rectangular, triangular, square and pentagonal floor plans, with the core area always the same. His reflection on the optimum use of surfaces foreshadows the approach to the later design of tower blocks, the imperative of which was the rationalisation of architectural design and topological optimisation – including in the construction, in the design of which Ervin Prelog, Ph.D., at that time one of the most prominent Yugoslav experts in the field of theory and analysis of structures, played a key role.
The winning competition design with code 26534 for the new Revolution Square – a cut-out showing a comparison of the “useful areas” in the rectangular, square and pentagonal floor plans of the tower and in the triangular floor plan with “wing extensions”. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
Ravnikar also included a monument in the winning design, which was not the subject of the competition. He conceived it as a shallow pool from which three sets of water jets would emerge on special occasions, and defined it as “a monumental urban motif of three water columns of hyperboloid forms”. Other monuments to political figures are mentioned in the study, including “Tito’s monument in the large square itself”. From the photographs of the model and the ground plan published in newspapers, it is possible to see that Ravnikar had envisaged placing Tito’s sculpture in the axis of the portal of the People's Assembly building: perhaps such an emphasis was just one of the architect's pragmatic manoeuvres, as was, on the other hand, the reduction of the Monument to the Revolution to a shallow pool with water elements which, despite its declared “magnificence”, would have remained largely unnoticeable in comparison with the architectural composition itself. However, it can be seen from the competition design that he paid a lot of attention to the green belt on the western part of Revolution Square, where he envisaged a monumental area with a hexagonal mausoleum. He called it “Pantheon, the common monument of the great Slovenes”. The arrangement, which, in connection with the park in front of the museum formed the so-called “area of national piety”, was most probably connected with the aspirations to relocate the Navje memorial cemetery in the northern part of Ljubljana. It was designed by Jože Plečnik as a relic of the larger, never realised design of the Solemn Cemetery with the church named The Temple of Glory (Hram slave), for which Ravnikar also drew the plans in Plečnik's seminar.
The winning competition design with code 26534 for the new Revolution Square – a cut-out showing Ravnikar’s proposal for the Monument to the Revolution. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
Ravnikar's winning solution consisted of several other buildings arranged around a main north-south oriented platform, adapted for public manifestations, and three smaller squares: two to the north and west of the Ursuline church with the monastery building, and one on the east side of the presidential palace, linked with the largest one in a “spatial and visual union”. To the north of the Pension Institute block, in the “zone of the Executive Council and the Central Committee”, a hall building was to stand, dedicated to the Executive Council like one of the tower blocks. In addition, a building for the DIT (Society of Engineers, Architects and Technicians), a new gallery (Jakopič pavilion), administrative and catering facilities, services and also new sites for commerce, concentrated in the “zone of intensive daily life” at the eastern end, were planned for Revolution Square.
Between 1960 and 1962, several building variants were created, also related to the “select competition for the layout of Revolution Square”, which was completed in May 1961. It concerned the western tower of the Executive Council and was also won by Ravnikar. These plans, drawn up from 1961 by the Investment Institute for the Construction of Revolution Square (IZITR), which was set up especially for this project, vary both in the location and design of the buildings on Revolution Square and the position of the Monument to the Revolution.
Plan J 30 2, June 1960, showing a building variant with a single tower. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit (roll) 04.01.
Despite the numerous building variants, the essential elements of Ravnikar's original design were preserved until the start of construction in 1962, as well as after the change of investors and the subsequent changes to the original development plan. In addition to the tower blocks above the platform, the green belt to the west and the monument, finally relegated to the periphery of the architectural composition, a horizontally stretched commercial building on the eastern side of the platform and an office building designed as an extension of the street block along Josipina Turnograjska Street were added. The building, conceived as a new Jakopič pavilion and originally located north of Šubičeva Street, was later implemented as an extension to Plečnik's school building, with a bookstore on the lower floors.
Plan J 30 3.1, July 7, 1961, marking all buildings in Revolution Square. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit (roll) 04.01.
Some of the facilities were not built, or the planned programmes were later housed in buildings added to the base of the towers. Instead of the stand-alone building of the House of Technology and the Central Technical Library, the latter was housed in an extension to the western tower block. The banking premises fill the extension at the foot of the eastern tower block.
The cinema in the southern part of the square, on the axis between the two towers and entirely below ground level, was to be converted into several halls of the congress centre after the work on Revolution Square was stopped. The cinema was only partially built, and later incorporated into the Cankarjev Dom Cultural and Congress Centre. The two towers, which were planned as identical buildings, were intended for official representation and administration (the western tower) and for commercial companies (the eastern tower). After a change of investor, they were allocated to the offices of Iskra Commerce and Ljubljanska banka, but they reached just over half their originally planned height.
Layout plan for the new Revolution Square, ground floor (construction phases of Annex B), April 1970. Source: SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 07.01.
The essence of the transformation of the complex was best summed up by Ravnikar himself when he added a comment in pencil to the text on Revolution Square in the typescript of Karl Friedrich Gollmann's doctoral dissertation (1985), dedicated to his oeuvre: “After much searching and testing, the concept finally settled on two triangular towers as the most rational in terms of the relationship between the peripheral spaces and the necessary area for the core. The final heights were set at half the original (due to the cost of technology) and especially to make them more reconcilable with the old town. The shift towards the centre of the square created two spaces separated by the masses of the two towers, which close in with the tops of the triangles forming ‘a gate to Ljubljana’ (...). The heights of the buildings are arranged according to a special plan for a unified view from the Philharmonic Hall.” Ravnikar called this transformation of the square “a reversal of design”, adding reluctantly that the richness of this reversal, which he also saw in “the effect of sun and shadow throughout the day and throughout the year”, had “not yet been captured by a photographer to show the qualities of such design reasoning.”
The architectural and urban qualities of the Republic Square complex were truly enhanced by the realisation of much lower, and in addition unevenly rising towers with asymmetrical top ends and extensions differing in form, dimensions and material, as well as by the additional articulation of the central open space. Today, because of its already recognised qualities and values, it is a listed monument of national importance. Recent research has shown that not only the square as a whole, but also the towers themselves should be considered among the most important architectural achievements in our country, since they are truly pioneering approaches in design in terms of constructing tall buildings, ensuring seismic safety and topological optimisation.
View of Republic Square, photo: Janez Kališnik, MAO archive.
Text by Tina Potočnik, Ph.D., IPCHS (Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia)
Image sources:
Figure 1: View from Congress Square towards the Ursuline Church and the construction site of the eastern
tower of Republic Square. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, photographic collection, photo B47-040.
Figure 2: The view from Congress square to the Ursuline church and the eastern tower on Republic Square
today. Photo Credit: Alberto Rodriguez Arias, OHS Archive
Figure 3: Photograph of the model of the competition proposal for the new Revolution Square, Arhitekt magazine, No. 4, 1960.
Figure 4: The winning competition design with code 26534 – a cut-out showing the new Revolution Square.
Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
Figure 5: Ravnikar's competition project was accompanied by illustrations of the placement of the new complex in the context of the historic built-up area, taking into account the “period of construction”, the purpose and elevation of the existing buildings, the surrounding greenery and other areas, the existing road network and also the archaeological remains. The winning competition design of the new Revolution Square. Cut-out showing the placement of Emona. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
Figure 6: Photograph of a model, prior to April 1962. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01. Materials presented to the public competition of the Monument to the Revolution. Figure 7: View of the Nuns’ Garden and the recently built National Assembly building (today’s parliament) in 1963. Source: Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Ljubljana unit, photograph collection. Figure 8: Construction work on Republic Square, 1966. Source: Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Ljubljana unit, photograph collection. Figure 9: View of the commercial building construction site. Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 01.01, folder M, photo 9. Figure 10: The winning competition design with code 26534 for the new Revolution Square – a cut-out showing a comparison of the “useful areas” in the rectangular, square and pentagonal floor plans of the tower
and in the triangular floor plan with “wing extensions”. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
Figure 11: The winning competition design with code 26534 for the new Revolution Square – a cut-out showing Ravnikar’s proposal for the Monument to the Revolution. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 37.01.
Figure 12: Plan J 30 2, June 1960, showing a building variant with a single tower. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit (roll) 04.01.
Figure 13: Plan J 30 3.1, July 7, 1961, marking all buildings in Revolution Square. Source: Historical Archives of Ljubljana, SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit (roll) 04.01.
Figure 14: Layout plan for the new Revolution Square, ground floor (construction phases of Annex B), April 1970. Source: SI ZAL, LJU 173, IZITR, unit 07.01.
Figure 15: Birds eye view of Republic Square, photo: Damjan Gale, MAO collection
Figure 16: View of Republic Square, photo: Janez Kališnik, MAO collection.
Archive footage: RTV Slovenia Archive
Translation: Jerca Kos
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