On Saturday 1 December in the Italian city of Gubbio, the City of Ljubljana received the prestigious international architectural award Gubbio for the renovation of Congress Square and the revitalisation of archaeological parks.

This was indirectly an award for the efforts of the City of Ljubljana, whose strategic goal in the fields of culture and cultural tourism are to achieve the comprehensive conservation and development of cultural heritage and its integration into contemporary life and creativity.

The renovated Congress Square, iEmona in the Chopin Passage (Chopinov prehod) and the new archaeological path between the revitalised archaeological parks are good examples of the successful development of the city that links heritage with the contemporary.

Gubbio Italian architectural award

The Gubbio Award is given by L'Associazione Nazionale Centri Storico-Artistici - A.N.C.S.A., the most important Italian professional association in the fields of architecture and planned urban renovation. The prize is awarded every three years in three categories: national, European and an academic award.

This year’s award was the seventh in a series, and Ljubljana was a candidate with its project to incorporate cultural heritage into the planned renovation of the city in the case of the Congress Square renovations. The competition comprised eight European projects from Portugal, Spain, France and Belgium, and Ljubljana along with Grenoble took the main award in the European category.

The award reasoning principally emphasised the strict adherence to and integration of older cultural layers – from Roman Emona to Plečnik’s design for Congress Square – with the use of contemporary architectural approaches, which enable the revitalisation of run-down public space and its successful incorporation into the modern pulse of city life and the daily lives of the city’s residents and visitors.

iEmona, a new subterranean promenade beneath Congress Square

The project was driven by the construction of an underground public car park and is a model for the successful interweaving of the reconstruction of architectural heritage and the integration of archaeological heritage into an indispensible contemporary urban structure. What could have been just a run-down subterranean passageway is today a quality public space intended for the broadest general public and as such physically and in content terms accessible to all.

The purpose of the presentation is above all to raise the awareness of the domestic public, leading in turn to responsible heritage management. This is followed in the concept of the presentation: modern technologies are used with interactivity and levels for different target groups. The exhibition goes beyond the classic museum framework and passes into the sphere of everyday life, and in this way the fields of their own reasoning and the values of cultural heritage and space are also opened to ‘non-museum’ visitors. As it was put by Irena Šinkovec (MGML), “iEmona is part of the broader concept of the presentation of cultural heritage in the context of the planned development of Ljubljana. The first is the presentation of Emona, while there are plans for prehistoric Ljubljana (Špica) and medieval and early modern Ljubljana (Krekov/Vodnikov trg). There are also further possibilities for baroque Ljubljana, greater Ljubljana, Plečnik’s Ljubljana, Ravnikar’s / socialist Ljubljana, and so on”. The purpose of these points is to give a comprehensive spatial overview of each individual temporal cross-section, which has in a planning sense essentially changed and upgraded the image of Ljubljana. The purpose of each info point is to guide visitors on the ground (for example Emona – ancient monuments; ancient history - Ljubljanica, Barje, green spaces; middle and new age - Old Ljubljana, the Castle and so on) as well as to museums, tourist points, cultural events and programmes.

The award to the project has set Ljubljana even more firmly towards preparations to commemorate 2000 years of Emona in 2014, when the city will be enlivened by numerous programmes on that theme. With the planned partnership with Ljubljana Tourism and Ljubljana Museum and Galleries, in 2013 iEmona and the renovated archaeological parks will be provided with various tourist products and as such will become an indispensible element of Ljubljana’s quality visitor offer.

The reasoning for the awards can be found at the following link.