Temenos Bezigrad

The sanctuary for the super-rich develops an architectural program that does not fight global financial mechanisms but accepts it as a form of power generating architectural form in favor of the super-rich. Being aware of the controversial nature, I chose to explore the potential of an extreme program as laboratory for formal experiment and composition

The project is inspired by a preliminary research on the work of Jože Plecnik, master of architecture and urbanism. The profound analysis and personal reading of his oeuvre has lead to highly relevant topics in architecture. The research focussed on a reading of the market, university library and national parliament. These are all projects with great symbolic value for Ljubljana because of their function and time in which they were designed. Besides this, the buildings have an important formal value for the city. They are forms of power, spatial figures that shape the fabric of the city centre.\nThis thesis must therefore primarily be read as an experiment in search of new forms of power, that shift the focus from the capitalization of the city centre towards the strategic development of neighborhoods outside the city centre. Central to this experiment is the idea of a tax haven embassy as sanctuary for those richer circles of society refusing to contribute to the redistribution of wealth. A choice triggered by Slovenian protests against the corruption of political leaders and capitalism. A diplomatic stronghold is one of those few places where political leadership is seduced for making deals, or can provide the higher social circles of the appropriate contacts to set up extra legal financial constructions. Thus the embassy is rendered as an infrastructure of escape for the wealthiest and most powerful members of society, avoiding over more than 5 trillion dollars on taxes worldwide. ?The project challenges references from the past, of what a contemporary embassy should express, how it should engage with the city instead of being closed-off islands in the infinite sea of urbanization. It engages with the complexity of the financial constructions and the security infrastructure in the design of pure but complex plan layouts. It is within this framework that the metaphor of a sanctuary for the super-rich is used as a lead to reflect on architecture and its representational value, the status of an embassy in the contemporary city and a search for an architectural language inspired by Plecniks legacy.