In cooperation with the Museum of Architecture and Design Ljubljana an interactive Blind Date of European architects, planners and experts in urban development will be organised in autumn 2015. Under the title “Urban Realities” a collaboration of three selected teams together with local experts will be started. Invited architects and planners will work on a concrete topic and on abandoned construction pits in the city of Ljubljana.
A city walk through Ljubljana opened the event. The teams discover abandoned pits and learned about the existing reality. A proposal of future uses of these sites was developed within a discussion of the international teams and local experts. The visions for new urban realities will be presented to and discussed with the audience in a public event in the evening.
Background
Ljubljana’s wider center hides at least ten construction pits, which are devastated for years. After the collapse of the biggest construction companies in Slovenia their remains in Ljubljana evokes many problems. This unfinished construction pits are empty and degraded. Thought there is a strong gentrification and also turistification process going on in the city centre of Ljubljana. The mayor Zoran Janković is still convinced that Ljubljana is the most beautiful city in the world.
“Slovenia is not a friendly country in terms of foreign investment and the attitude towards those who gather the courage and even their own money to build something new, it’s quite shocking.” said Csaba Toth, director of the project company Emonika, new passenger-shopping center with a 100-foot tower, which should be constructed out of the hole at the railway station. According to Toth municipal contribution and compensation for building land are extremely high – among the highest in Europe, as well as labour costs and bureaucracy, which is very complicated.
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