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2003 PROJECT

TOURISM vs. CITY Tourism has in past 50 years made the strongest influenced on the Adriatic region. In this area it was the image of the architecture that has strongly influenced the sector. For that reason it is difficult in some cases to draw a line between the city and a theme park of a city, the “real thing” and artificial villages and ports. It has changed the way that city works. Driven by a constant need for excitement, it generates continuous need for new and unprecedented forms and activities. Fantasy is the next best thing to the real ideological conception in a branded service economy.

PROGRAM The tourist sector has been in past capable of adopting other forms and typologies, and for that reason one can equally benefit from its experience when addressing issues of the city.
Wider intervention area of Izola is built using three different housing typologies that were almost forgotten from the recent architectural discourse: detached family houses, towers and mobile homes.

DETACHED HOUSES Format of the single-family house corresponds to the small size businesses that are predominant in the area, enabling spontaneous insertion of both programs at the same time. Housing area to the east of the site is extended inside the intervention area.

X-SITE The competition site is developed with the two remaining types: towers and mobile homes. Evidently two have different users and time of use, and the aim was to mix fixed and temporary program equally on the site.
The idea was that mobile homes would be stocked, when not used, on a designated part of the terrain leaving the rest of the site free. While towers serve population that has decided to stay for a while, mobile homes could house both tourist and alternative population on more temporary basis. Mobile homes have no specific rules for positioning on the site, what would create a constantly changing irregular pattern resembling medieval coastal villages and towns.

TOWERS View is the most desired virtue of the costal sites, and it is not by chance that most densely populated coastal towns have opted for towers instead of slabs; in this way everyone has a view.
“Towers” are conceived as 6-storey buildings in average, consisting of slabs cantilevered one on top of each other, creating terraces for the apartment above. Each of them has a glass swimming pool within the terrace, making it a “swimming pool with a view”.

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