Breda Mihelič, Urbanistični

with two other tasks of spatial planning: the decentralised regional development and the general plan of Ljubljana (GUP). With the new legislation, in the early 1960s, all of the above encouraged the establishment of new main actors in housing planning - the Urban Planning Institutes in all major cities (e.g. LUZ, Ljubljana Urban Planning Institute) and the Urban Planning Institute of the People’s Republic of Slovenia (LRS, est. in 1955, operating from 1959). In addition to decentralised development, and in connection with it, the discussion on the regulation plan of Ljubljana continued after the war, especially at the Faculty of Architecture. As early as 1955, Ravnikar’s seminar developed a study of the branched development of Ljubljana, which envisaged the city’s expansion along the main entrances, with green wedges between them and the division into building islands with neighbourhoods. These studies of the city’s urban development formed the basis for General Urban Plan of Ljubljana (GUP), which was finally approved in 1966.42 The GUP formalised the morphological model of branched urban development and defined the neighbourhood as the fundamental spatial unit of residential areas. The plan identified a series of relatively vacant plots of land along the main city entrances and earmarked them for the construction of larger residential neighbourhoods.43 They became the foundations of the architectural and urban development of post-war Ljubljana.44

42. Malešič, “Od naselja do soseske,” 33-44.

43. Mihelič, Urbanistični razvoj Ljubljane, 30-31,59.

44. Luka Skansi and Matevž Čelik, Soseske in ulice: Vladimir Braco Mušič in arhitektura velikega merila (Ljubljana: MAO, 2016), 55.

45. Mihelič, Urbanistični razvoj Ljubljane, 57.

46. JLA (five-storey blocks along Šmartinska, 1954), Gradis (Gradis’ singles home between Linhartova and Savska street, 1954)

viii. The evolving Sava settlement

Although the first real residential neighbourhoods in Ljubljana were not realised until the 1960s, some elements of the neighbourhood concept had already been applied in Sava settlement, the largest organised construction site in post-war Ljubljana.45 It grew in the triangle between Linhartova, Šmartinska, and Topniška streets and was built by various investors.46 The original core of the settlement consisted of one-storey residential houses reminiscent of the first workers’ houses. It was the first settlement in Ljubljana (1957) to receive a supply centre.

The settlement has been expanding spontaneously since the 1950s without a unified plan. For the construction and external arrangement, a building plan was drawn up in 1958, according to which this settlement acquired a more comprehensive character and identity. This resulted from the theoretical development of the residential neighbourhoods, which began to take root in Slovenia in the late 50s, and received a special emphasis and theoretical

Opposite page: Figure 9: M. Jernejec, M. D. Lajovic, J. Lap; Model of a neighbourhood unit for 5000 people (1956-58); Presented at “Porodica i domačinstvo” Zagreb, 1956