A new sports centre for Ljubljana

Founded by Jurij Sadar and Bostjan Vuga in Ljubljana in 1996, the Sadar + Vuga design practice has worked on a wide variety of projects over the years, focusing in particular on integration between architecture and the landscape.
As part of a group of urban planning firms operating under the banner of «Formula New Ljubljana», it is involved in city governance and in the use of architecture as a tool for improving urban spaces through the ongoing experience of interpretation and social mediation.
To develop the masterplan and the individual constituent projects, the practice cooperated with other important design teams: KSS Group of London as consultants for the development of sports facilities, MYSI of Tel Aviv and AIF Design of Ljubljana for the concept and engineering of the retail spaces.
The Stožice Sports Park extends over an area of more than 180,000 square metres and is the most important sports facility in Ljubljana and indeed the whole of Slovenia. It will be used to host major sporting events over the coming years and consists of numerous buildings, including a football stadium, a multifunctional area, a variety of sports fields and a shopping centre.
Via the green roof, the shopping spaces are designed to blend seamlessly with the urban park that extends as far as the city centre. The large monolith of the stadium and the arena together with the adjacent residential towers of district BS3 and the Smelt office buildings are part of a cluster of highly iconic buildings that have become the new gateway to the city.
The major design efforts in developing the complex and the meticulous choice of suppliers allowed for an exceptional speed of implementation, as a result of which the Stožice Sports Park took just two years to build.
The project involved a large number of international suppliers, including the Italian porcelain tile and white body tile manufacturer NovaBell, whose collections were chosen for more than 10,000 square metres of floors and walls in the common areas, spectator toilets and player changing rooms.
The collections used in the Stožice Sports Park included Trekking, Emporio, Play, Spazio, Terre di Siena, Softlook, Limited Edition and Link, in colours ranging from various shades of black and grey through to coffee brown, red and a strikingly modern shade of lime green. Used as a finishing accessory in many areas, the Softlook collection delivers high non-slip performance based on nanotechnology research. It is one of the products developed through the company’s Ecosystem sustainable development programme based on meticulous, ongoing research into reducing waste, optimising the yields of all manufacturing resources and reusing and recycling materials. Another important factor is that of the certifications endorsing Italian products in the contract sector at an international level. The NovaBell collections used in this project comply with the LEED® evaluation system for low-impact buildings. The only exceptions are Limited Edition and Link as they are white body single-fired wall tiles. The Soft Look collection also meets the standards of the European environmental quality mark Ecolabel.