ZAPS has awarded its Golden Pencil for spatial planning to the planners behind the City of Ljubljana municipal spatial plan.

The Slovenian Chamber of Architecture and Spatial Planning (ZAPS) has awarded its Golden Pencil for spatial planning to the planners behind the City of Ljubljana municipal spatial plan.

Each year, ZAPS confers professional recognition on its members’ greatest achievements in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and spatial planning (every second year). The objective of having a comprehensive exhibition by its members and giving awards is to promote quality architecture and open space management among the general public and to raise awareness of the cultural and creative dimensions of design and spatial planning. ZAPS awarded prizes to those projects that have made a quality creative contribution to construction in the local environment and the Chamber has been doing so ever since 2004. The prizes are honorary (not financial) and ZAPS members can be nominated in the following categories:

- Golden Pencil: an award for excellence in realisation in the fields of architecture and landscape architecture for projects carried out in the recent period
- Golden Pencil: an award for spatial planning given every second year
- Platinum Pencil: an award given to a ZAPS member for a more extensive opus in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture or spatial planning
- ZAPS Diploma: an award for a particular important organisational contribution in the development and promotion of ZAPS and the profession
- Honorary member of ZAPS: the award is conferred for the highest and broadest organisational and professional contributions to the development and promotion of both ZAPS and the profession; the award can also be given to non-members.

Golden Pencil for spatial planning

The Golden Pencil for spatial planning award for projects implemented in the 2006–2011 period was awarded by an international jury that this year comprised Liljana Jankovič Grobelšek, Mojmir Prelog MA and Marcus Schaefer. The Golden Pencil for spatial planning award was, among others, given to Ferdo Jordan and a group of planners from LUZ, d. d., Prof Janez Koželj, Miran Gajšek MA, Tomaž Souvan and a group of planners from the City of Ljubljana for the City of Ljubljana municipal spatial plan.

In the grounds for the award, the Slovenian Chamber of Architecture and Spatial Planning stated that: “The City of Ljubljana municipal spatial plan – ID is an interdisciplinary project, which represents the final phase of exceptionally broad, many-year-long professional work by diverse professional profiles. On the basis of the City of Ljubljana’s pre-established and professionally co-ordinated strategic spatial development concepts, the group of compilers of the act has managed to produce a spatial and urban planning document that contains not merely the elements prescribed in legislation but also numerous additional urban planning components that will contribute to appropriate spatial management. From the chaotic state of a collection of innumerable and mostly outdated spatial and urban planning acts, which have been in place up to now in Ljubljana, the City of Ljubljana has acquired a new, comprehensive, coherent and transparent spatial document as a basis for the effective, contemporary and sustainable spatial development of the city”.

You can read more about this year’s ZAPS awards on the Chamber’s website.