The new Cultural Center and Library are designed as two buildings one above the other. The cultural hall is completely underground, enabling the library to take over the entire volume of the floating roof. 

"Here, next to the lake, which was fed by a stream from the North, two important paths crossed. One led from Kranj towards Kamnik, and the other led from Ljubljana towards Jezersko. Water and road were the two essential conditions for life and settlement. The original, clustered part of the village was created around the church by the lake, then it spread along the stream to the North and along the roads."  Source: www.sencur.si

The starting point for the design of the new Cultural Centre and Library in Šenčur  - a village in the Slovene Alpine region known as Gorenjska, are the typical architectural and material features of the archetypal house found in this region – a heavy, stone or plastered base over which a timber part rises - a porch and a steep gabled roof, which makes good use of the volume above the rectangular floor plan. The latter, with its ridge oriented East-West, also follows the place's urban and landscape image.

The typology, although derived from anonymous architecture, with the reinterpretation of the essential parts of the vernacular house and the bend in the gable roof, results in a calm, yet outstanding image, befitting an important building for cultural activity in the very center of the village and the central square.

The new building is clear in its architectural concept and is divided into three recognizable parts:

• heavy base - underground, performative hall

• public, transparent ground floor - foyer and multi-purpose hall

• a floating, sloping roof - the library

The client wished for a facility that would be visually as small as possible, despite requiring many programs in a small location. Consequently, the performance hall is entirely located in the basement, where it is organized as an effective black box. In this way, the building above the ground floor is visually reduced, and the public space in front of it is freed up, continuing inside the building via a stepped base, which hides all the services necessary for the functioning of the hall in the basement and the lively library on the upper floor.​

​​

​​​

Location: Šenčur, Slovenia

Project date: 2024

Site area: 1.860 m2

Building area: 615 m2

Total floor area: 3.544 m2

Type: Public/Culture/Educational

Client: Šenčur Municipality

​

Authors: SVET VMES, Ltd.: Jure Hrovat, mia; Ana Kreč, mia; students: Žan Majetič, Žan Pirman

Collaborator: Jernej Klenovšek, student

​

Award: 1st prize at the Open, Public, Anonymous, Architectural Competition

​

Related articles:

ZAPS

Gorenjski glas