Interviewed in Ljubljana

ORIS: The fifties and the sixties in architecture are labelled the years of innovation. You are one of those architects who brought many innovations to Slovenia. In your 1956 Prule housing project, you were the first in Slovenia to introduce windows spanning from the ceiling to the floor and to make prefabricated single flight staircases. In 1964 you made the first atrium houses in Ljubljana, and between 1967 and 1976, you built the largest hospital in the former Yugoslavia since WW2, that is, the University Clinical Centre (UCC) in Ljubljana ...

Kristl: Essentially, architecture as creation is innovative. With each project, the architect is confronted by the questions “how?” and “why this way?”. Designing involves reasoning pro and contra, weighing criteria, seeking order, and incorporating the irrational elements of expressive discourse and narration… Designing synthesises spiritual and rational action.

Paul Valery believes that the architect should strive to “please the eye”, and that architecture, besides inviting us to look for what is concealed, is charged with spiritual meaning, and is still in tune with reason and the given circumstances.