The very different temperaments of the architects of Ofis Architects were evident from the start of the interview. This young architectural office in Ljubljana has been attracting attention from the international architectural press with some original, playful, beautiful and conceptually interesting designs for social housing, villas, museums and football stadiums.
“All our projects, whether housing, a chapel or a football stadium, begin with a focus on function. The functionality and the context of the site is primary,” Špela Videčnik assured me. For Rok Oman, who studied with her in Ljubljana and then at the Architectural Association in London before they started Ofis Architects together, it was less certain. “There is no rule. It depends. It is whatever comes first. The client might stipulate some quite impossible demands, so you are restricted from the outset. You have no choice but to take the limitations as a starting point. Social housing, for instance, is always subject to strict limits. There is hardly any budget for architecture, and the interior is totally prescribed in advance. The only freedom is to design the outer skin. For the Farewell Chapel, on the other hand, we had almost unlimited freedom.”

You are clearly two very different personalities.
Špela: “We are. But somehow we combine very well. Our approaches are complementary and over the years it has proved to work well.”

Your designs for the chapel and the football stadium suggest a very different architectural outlook from, say, your social housing. Is that a correct impression?
Špela: No, in my opinion our approach is always the same. We start with some pretty simple ideas about functionality. Then we define the volumes that are needed. And next we ask ourselves what extra we can do. At the Honeycomb Apartments in Isola, we looked at the apartment buildings that were already there in the vicinity and noted how people used their balconies. Outside space is very important in the Mediterranean climate but people use it in a special way. They cover the balcony with awnings, close off the sides with cardboard and install a small air conditioning unit. That way they can sit outside but stay cool. So we thought let’s integrate these devices into the design and build balconies that are partly enclosed to give more protection from the sun and with perforated side walls to provide natural ventilation. In the stadium design, on the other hand, our main aim was to maximize the visibility of the field. The highest level of the stands has the best view while lower down, especially at the corners, the view is much more restricted. So it was logical to place the entrances at the corners. The form of the stadium was the logical outcome of this functional consideration.” Rok: “In the case of social housing, almost everything is prescribed by law. It can be depressing. But we always try to create some contrast. We look for a certain extra we can give to the project.”

Aren’t you concerned about the maxim, almost a dogma, of Modern architecture – that the outside is supposed to reflect the inside?
Špela: “To me, that is a fake sincerity, especially when the inside is not at all interesting. The interiors of social sector homes are governed by regulations, not by architectural ideas. Why should we have to reflect them on the outside?”
Rok: “Sooner or later the users will show how they live in their homes – mainly on the balcony. So it’s not something that concerns us too much as architects. But in the City Museum, here in Ljubljana, we strove for an exterior that really does reflect the interior. Once again, there are no rules and we do not take a philosophical standpoint. We often aren’t even aware of why we choose to do one thing or another. Architecture is about invention; each project challenges us to invent something new.”

In most of your projects you blur the distinction between inside and outside. You create an intermediate space that connects instead of separating. Why is that important to you?
Špela: “Rok and I may hold different opinions about this. As for me, personally, it is crucial to give every apartment a winter garden, a balcony or a terrace. In Slovenia, we like to be outdoors. We don’t have a strong urban culture and most people originate from the countryside. It is still their dream to have a garden or at least an outdoor space. That is why we insist on providing loggias, balconies and winter gardens. It is where we make our extra contribution, especially as far as social housing is concerned. When we succeed in this, the apartments give the impression of being bigger than they really are. Rok’s personal preferences may be different from mine. The interior of the apartment he designed for himself is very Japanese in character, a closed box.”

The circular forms and curves you often use seem to be another way of connecting outside and inside. They appear, for example, in the City Museum, Villa Bled and the Farewell Chapel. Where did these curves come from?
Rok: “The first time we used the circle was in 1998 and we have used it quite often since then. Sometimes you choose a concept for a specific situation and then you discover it is useful for different situations and for different reasons. Before long it seems to be a trademark of your architecture, even though it wasn’t intended that way.”
Špela: ”While we were working on the City Museum project there was a series of archeological digs in progress next to it. The museum was undergoing a lot of changes and needed a new wing to house the new archeological layers were being exposed. We wanted to present them as they were found, as an excavation. The circular form emerged as the purest way of displaying them. A spiral route was an ideal solution for connecting the different levels.” Rok: “When you’re inserting a new element into an old context, it’s usually best to make a clear distinction between them. It doesn’t make sense to just repeat the existing forms. By creating a contrast you treat what is old with greater respect. The orthogonality of the old City Museum building benefits from the spiralling form of our intervention.”

The spiral appears again as a prominent feature in the staircase of Villa Bled. What is the thinking behind that staircase?
Špela: “Villa Bled is an eighteenth century house in beautiful, hilly countryside. The client wanted to extend the house to almost four times its previous size. But that was forbidden by the national heritage committee because it is situated in a protected landscape area. We came up with a solution that was quite unlike anything the other architects submitted to the competition. We proposed building an extension that was lower than the house so that it would be invisible from the opposite side of the lake. It would be largely concealed and thoroughly integrated into the landscape. A spiral staircase connects the flowing curves of the new extension to the rectangular block of the existing villa. The client insisted on a spiral staircase. Back in the eighties people were crazy here about American TV series like Dynasty, because they showcased a sumptuous lifestyle that was unknown in Slovenia at the time. A grand staircase was the ultimate status symbol, so we based our design on the one from Dynasty.”
Rok: “The staircase connects the areas for the parents and the children. It’s about seeing and being seen, and it helps improve contact between the generations. There are great views as you ascend the staircase but at the same time you get a sense of the whole layout of the house around you. Communication between the spaces was what mattered most. And the design seems to work: they hardly go out any more!”

You could have chosen to maximize the openness of the interior. But you have been more subtle about it, as though you were giving hints and clues but hiding what will come next, building up the suspense like in a film.
Špela: “Perhaps you are right. We didn’t try to have openness alone; we preferred to design specific rooms for dining, listening to music, working, etc. So the communication between spaces matters more than openness. You could say that we were creating a sequence of events that are somehow connected. You could call that cinematographic.”

What about the context? How important is the context to you?
Rok: “The context is very important, and it’s the core of every project in my opinion. But for each project there are many different contexts, such as the site, the social context and the climate. So you always have to choose what is the real context for the project, the context that makes the difference.”
Špela: “Often the context is the site, the landscape or surrounding buildings. The context of the Farewell Chapel is clear enough. The chapel adjoins a cemetery and it is embedded into a grassy hills. But sometimes the project site is surrounded by mediocre and monotonous buildings, especially in the case of social housing. In that situation, we try to relate to some other aspect of the context, or alternatively we create a strong contrast. We try to make our architecture different, original. Why does everything in this world have to be global and international? Although our starting point is modernistic, we like to add traditional Alpine materials like wood or slate, and to use architectural features that are typical of farmhouses in the Alpine part of Slovenia. Using these materials and architectural elements serves both beauty and functionality. The Alpine climate is cool, with strong winds and quite a bit of snow in winter. Those are the conditions a building has to deal with there. In the south of Slovenia the climate is much warmer and Mediterranean, so there our main concern is to provide shade and ventilation. This approach of turning to traditional architecture for ways of dealing with the climate stems from our affinity with the Slovenian architect Plečnik, who began using traditional elements in his buildings when the rest of the architectural world was completely occupied with modernism.”
Rok: “It is important to have some kind of identity. National borders are disappearing, we have the same money all over most of Europe. Slovenia didn’t have its own banknotes until after the breakup of Yugoslavia; they were beautiful but they only lasted for about ten years! We were isolated and less developed than Western Europe, but that had an advantage: we were less affected by the crude functionalism of commercial architecture and were able to go our own way. In recent years this unique position has been under threat. Slovenians are too easygoing about giving up their own identity. Beautiful old houses, farms and villages are being destroyed. We, on the other hand, try to embed features of traditional architecture into our own architecture – not just to remind people of the past, but also because they are very functional. This doesn’t apply only to our work in Slovenia. We always look at the vernacular architecture when we do commissions in other countries such as France or Finland.”

Influences of both Plečnik and Le Corbusier, two antithetical architects, are evident in the work of Ofis Architects. What did you learn from them?
Rok: “Our work is not intentionally based on their architecture, but you are right, it has a touch of both. Le Corbusier understood very well how to create space. Plečnik was a master in creating interesting textures. His designs were full of quotations, of small or large fragments of existing sources.”
Špela: “I think Plečnik was an architect who went his own way. He did what interested him without bothering about the functionalism that was sweeping architecture all around the world. Some people called him conservative because of his references to classical architecture, but I think that is a superficial view his work. He took whatever he considered relevant, vernacular elements and even stones he found at the site, and combined them in a very free, personal way. I admire him a lot. His approach to architecture played an important part in our training at the University of Ljubljana.”

How do you see the future of your practice?
Rok: “We are just at the start, just warming up. It’s as though we are waiting at the front door of what we really would like to do and we haven’t managed to get through it yet. We have already finished a lot of projects and their quality isn’t bad, but architecture in Slovenia doesn’t give much scope for expression. We feel we have the potential to do so much more.”