Native studio Medprostor has lined and partially repaired a 900-year-old Romanesque church in Slovenia, putting an operable roof on prime of the open construction to create an area “between a damage and a reconstruction”.
Medprostor crafted a sequence of modest interventions alongside the folding roof that intention to guard the numerous monastic constructing, positioned contained in the fortified grounds of the historic Žiče Charterhouse.
The repairs and alterations had been additionally meant to enhance its performance for tourism and occasions.
In accordance with the studio, the challenge was conceived to guard the church’s immaterial qualities as an historic and sacred place, along with preserving its bodily stays.
“The development and restoration interventions had been carried out in such a manner that they allow a chronological studying of the 900-year-old sacral area,” Medprostor cofounder Jerneja Fischer Knap informed Dezeen.
“[The design] absolutely conforms to the necessities of heritage safety for reversibility, with much less invasive and fewer intense interventions,” he continued.
“The most important intervention was the masking of the present constructing with a semi-movable, folding roof,” Knap stated.
“When lowered, it permits the graceful working of occasions within the church whatever the season and climate, whereas when raised, it preserves probably the most necessary intangible moments of the damage: contact with the open sky.”
Light-weight black metal, blackened wooden and darkish slate tiles make up the half-gable roof system, distinguishing the gesture from the church’s authentic masonry structure.
Medprostor additionally selected restrained and rectilinear geometries for its interventions, looking for to ascertain a low-tech aesthetic language that might sit harmoniously in opposition to the heritage constructions.
“The roof, along with its particulars and proportions is said to the important thing architectural components of the entire church,” Knap defined. “And but, it may possibly additionally act as an phantasm – a spectre in concord with the open, ephemeral character of the damage… [a] area between a damage and a reconstruction.”
The studio reconstructed a demolished portion of the church’s partitions and flooring, whereas spiral staircases had been positioned into current vertical shafts to reconnect guests to an upper-level viewing platform.
“Two staircases are related to a brand new lookout level with a slender, barely sloping hall main as much as it, framed by the outer faces of the [reconstructed] north wall,” Knap defined.
“The lookout level presents a vital view from above of the northern a part of the monastery advanced and its ruined character.”
Slovenian structure studio Medprostor was established by Knap, Rok Žnidaršič and Samo Mlakar in 2011, with tasks spanning throughout the private and non-private sectors.
Medprostor’s interventions at Žiče Charterhouse had been shortlisted for the 2024 European Mies van der Rohe Award, which has beforehand been received by Grafton Architects for its colonnaded educating constructing for Kingston College in London.
The seven finalists for the 2024 Mies van der Rohe Award had been not too long ago revealed to incorporate The Reggio Faculty by Andrés Jaque, a copper-clad convent in France and a library by SUMA Arquitectura in Spain.
The pictures is by Miran Kambič.
