The initial condition for reconstruction was abolition of private property - nationalisation, which enabled a reorganisation of social life and set ground for

47. Ivanšek, France. Družina, stanovanje in naselje: anketna raziskava 195 stanovanj v Savskem naselju v Ljubljani (1961). Ljubljana: PP Ambient, 1988.

48. Mihelič, Urbanistični razvoj Ljubljane, 57.

49. Andrej Mercina, Arhitekt Ilija Arnautović: socializem v slovenski arhitekturi (Ljubljana: Viharnik, 2006), 41. program at the 1958 exhibition and publication “Family and Household” in Zagreb. At that time, the construction of the Sava settlement was already in an advanced stage, so it was impossible to remodel the settlement in an ideal way based on new knowledge and supplement it with all the accompanying facilities that such a settlement requires.47 Following the neighbourhood principles, the settlement first received five-storey blocks arranged north-south along the main perimeter and inner roads. The negative consequences of parcelled planning and construction, without a more complex initial urban plan, are mainly reflected in the architectural heterogeneity and inconsistent quality of the use-value of individual residential buildings. This confirms the belief that creating a wellarranged, functionally and formally appropriate settlement is more significant when the urban design is, as much as possible, combined with the conception of individual buildings.48

The introduction of organised housing construction and new technology have strongly influenced the typological development of housing architecture. Between 1958-62, the construction of one of the first residential high-rises was made possible, according to the plans of I. Arnautović and M. Mihelič. The new vertical focus of the Sava settlement consists of five 14-storey high-rises, which are clustered across the terrain and raised on piles. They are among the most elegant examples of this typology due to the elementary connection between the floor plan of the apartments and the external appearance. They are well integrated into the urban ambience of the surroundings and break the monotony of the boxy architecture of the apartment blocks. Each floor consists of four apartments arranged around a central staircase. The two- or three-room apartment, with its refined design, represents the culmination of the development of an essential type of residential floor plan. It introduces an important novelty, the central household-sanitary core (slo. gospodinjsko-sanitarni vozel), designed in 1955 by I. Arnautović, M. Mihelič. The whole apartment is designed as one large space with a centrally placed installation block, around which are arranged circularly connected niches. With such an array of spaces, relatively small apartments gain views along their entire length, which optically enhances them. Despite the minimal sizes of individual rooms, the design of the apartment allows a great deal of flexibility. The main parameters of the interior spaces directly define the external structure of the building.49

In the second half of the 1960s, prefabrication began to gain ground, enabling faster and cheaper construction and greater flexibility in urban space design.

Figure 10: 1961 Urban plan of Sava settlement

Figure 11: 1955, I. Arnautović, M. Mihelič; High-rise floor plan of four apartments with sanitary-cores

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Figure 12:

Sava Settlement, 1960