Villa Urbana

Area: 25,507 m2
Year of construction: 2008
Capital investment value: €48 million
Architects: Boris Podrecca and Jadranka Grmek

Villa Urbana is a remarkable architectural achievement. With its outstanding combination of beauty and functionality, it is an ideal place for business and private life to meet and interweave. A multipurpose complex with 82 luxury flats, 280 parking spaces and 4,600 m2 of office space, Villa Urbana occupies an exclusive position on the bank of the Ljubljanica, in the very heart of the city. The complex was designed by renowned architect Boris Podrecca in conjunction with Jadranka Grmek, who also acted as project manager. The lobby and staircases of the residential part of the complex feature magnificent mosaics by Marko Rupnik. The complex is also distinguished by its high energy efficiency and was classified in the highest energy-saving category within the OPET Slovenia project.

Boris Podrecca and Villa Urbana

Boris Podrecca is a visionary who sees the world in special colours. For him, life does not exist without light, water, earth, stone and everything in between. Perhaps that is why all his creations contain so much life within them. Villa Urbana is no exception. He has filled it with details and has been unsparing in his use of colours and light. He has coloured the space between the individual blocks and inside them with its unerring sense for beauty and harmony. And when all this is added together, the result is an astonishing creation like this complex between the Ljubljanica and the Castle Hill.

Mosaics by Marko Rupnik – an interplay of stone and gold

Click for zoomThe decorative elements of the complex were designed by Marko Rupnik, a mosaic-maker, theologian and remarkable philosopher whose mosaics can be found throughout Europe and also in Syria and in the USA. Villa Urbana boasts more than 260 m2 of mosaics, rising up to a height of 24 metres. The mosaic in the main foyer is particularly impressive when it is lit by the light of the midday sun, streaming in through the glass roof. Marko Rupnik says that his starting point in his work was the fact that art has to become a space in which life is present in its dimension of light.

Photoalbum of Villa Urbana