House XXS

“Slovenia is a small country, we have only one Ljubljana. Every building counts.”

From constraining limits often arise more interesting results than when a client gives you completely free rein. The XXS (eXtra-eXtra-Small) house was designed by Aljoša Dekleva for his parents even before he established a joint studio with his current wife, Tina Gregorič. The unusually small plot is located in the picturesque Ljubljana neighborhood of Krakovo - a former medieval village that once supplied the nearby monastery with fresh food and is now a strictly protected historical part of the city. The basic mass of the new house was predetermined by building regulations based on the shape of the original structure that stood on the site a century ago.
The newly designed house serves a married couple living in the countryside for overnight stays and occasional visits to the city.
The main task was to incorporate all living functions into an incredibly small volume, and since the entire house is oriented to the north, another challenging task was to bring enough sunlight into the living space on the ground floor through openings in the roof. Preservation office rules allow skylights to be placed on the roof, but in this case, the skylights protrude and project from the roof plane toward the sky. This projection also allowed the attic to be inhabited and utilized as a bedroom. Another place where indirect sunlight enters the interior is a giant sliding window facing north into a small courtyard. The roof and façades were designed by the architects using the same material – cement bonded particle boards. A similar simplicity in material selection prevails in the interior, which features exposed concrete, terrazzo, plywood, and iron.
Currently, the house covering an area of 43m² is used somewhat more frequently, as besides the grandparents, the architect himself and his small offspring occasionally stay there. Another prominent Slovenian architect and longtime educator at the nearby Faculty of Architecture, Aleš Vodopivec, has also fallen for the charm of the Krakovo neighborhood. A year later than XXS and fifty meters to the north, he renovated a small single-story house for his own needs.

“For Ljubljana, Plečnik is still the greatest mark. His architecture is currently far more important than any contemporary architecture - at least from a tourist perspective. This is fundamentally good for us. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao or Kunsthaus in Graz are of course something completely different; they are also not a relevant model for Ljubljana. An eventual variant would be like in Copenhagen. All of these projects arise also, not least, from political will. Due to the dominance of private investors, this is not well possible in Slovenia. What would I still wish for? That the state better safeguards publicly funded projects in terms of organizing competitions, selecting good projects, and promoting quality architecture. Slovenia is a small country, we have only one Ljubljana. Every building counts.”