Looking at the VELUX office building in the Slovenian town of Trzin, you somehow do not immediately understand where the facade ends and where the roof begins. The ground floor is deeply recessed, and above it, barely supported by thin metal supports, rises, protruding forward, a cold-gray metal facade, covered with large-format metal panels Esal; its ledges and ledges alternate, creating a sculptural play of chiaroscuro.
It looks like the rows of pitched roofs of a small European town attached to the facade like an exhibition stand; or into a giant attic, cut into vertical strips of various shapes. Sloped walls provide a good base for installing a variety of roof windows - and showcasing the possibilities of such windows made by VELUX. The skylights are united in sixteen vertical rows, piercing the walls from the floor of the second floor to the ceiling of the third. This is a showcase facade, very appropriate for a sales office.
The showcase façade faces the four-lane Ljubljana-Trzin motorway and is clearly visible from passing cars. It serves not only as a "volumetric advertisement" for VELUX products, but also - to a certain extent, a reference point for the entire commercial and industrial zone of Trzin, on the border of which it is located. Such zones appeared around Ljubljana during the period of economic growth after Slovenia gained independence. Their development is pragmatic and chaotic: concrete warehouse hangars prevail here, but there are also buildings with ambition, such as the glass pyramid of a bank three blocks from the VELUX office. Which, being built according to the project of the Ljubljana bureau Archiveda in 2007, certainly added a touch of elegance not devoid of rationalism to the image of the commercial and industrial territory of Trzin.
However, the VELUX building also has its own warehouse - a large colored precast concrete volume is located directly behind the first façade block and faces the local highway. In contrast to the verticals of the windows of the main façade, the walls of the warehouse are lined with thin horizontal strokes of the joints of the concrete panels.
I must say that from the point of view of design, the volume of the sales office is not even a separate building, but a large metal console of a six-seven-meter outreach, fixed in the concrete wall of the warehouse (thin diagonal rods that supposedly support the console do not actually carry anything, but serve to the integrity of the image and calming the nerves of visitors who are more comfortable thinking that the mass is based on something). From an architectural point of view, this is a large screen that covers the volume of the warehouse. On the right and on the left, the ends of the extended metal volume are supplemented with three-meter consoles, so that the warehouse buildings are not visible in the photographs and not noticeable from the motorway. Thanks to the end consoles, the inhabitants of the facade block received an additional six meters in length and about 150 sq. meters of area.
The first floor on the main façade, on the other hand, has disappeared almost completely, giving way to a parking lot: cars (just as Le Corbusier bequeathed) stop under the console of a suspended sales office. Leaving the cars, visitors are directed to the entrance: a narrow glass corridor (only there is room for it on the first floor) with a staircase to the second floor.
Inside, the sales office is divided into two blocks, each of which begins with a double-height hall with a staircase. The halls are bright, high and spacious, especially in contrast to the narrow staircase of the main entrance. The image of the building inside, as well as outside, is formed by the walls of the main facade, inclined, as we remember, at different angles. Somewhere thanks to this, space is freed up for the lecture hall, somewhere - on the contrary, the premises of meeting rooms and offices become more intimate. The ledges and ledges of the facades are thus functionally motivated and even necessary.
The microclimate in the building is supported by an intelligent electronic system, which also includes VELUX Integra windows. The system closes the windows when it rains and opens them when the temperature inside the building rises. The computer also controls the opening or closing of the blinds, the room is ventilated at the end of the working day, after which the system automatically closes all windows.
However, skylights are the protagonists of this interior, not only from a technical point of view; they prevail in it figuratively. During the day, they fill the interior space with sunlight, picked up by the whiteness of the walls. At night, a line of energetic runic light painting is lined up along the highway. In essence, the entire office console can be understood as a giant window made up of smaller windows woven into a shiny metal frame. The solution is spectacular, but at the same time strikingly functional: the building is constantly working to demonstrate the advantages of VELUX products: their strength, convenience, beauty. And what else does a good architecture need?
