Entrance Pavillion to Arboretum Volčji Potok
Entrance Pavillion to Arboretum Volčji Potok
Arboretum Vočji potok is a beautiful park that originally surrounded a castle. It used to be the property of the Souvan family, and was burnt at the end of the Second World War. Leon Souvan arranged the park in an arboretum full of ponds, a variety of different tree species and other plants. After the war, an imoprtant landscape architect Ciril Jeglič made plans for the arrangement of the park, but unfortunately they were not fully realized.
Our competition project dealt with the whole park, with its former design and its present purpose. We mainly regulated the area of the entrance to the park and the area adjacent to the port.
We completed the first phase, arrangement of the entrance into the arboretum. Crucial decision for this project was finding the most suitable location for the installement of a new entry pavilion. We searched for the site and the architectural expression of the building that would highlight the natural beauty of the area - a stream with a group of sequoia along it - while allowing the park to operate under different application scenarios. Despite some suggestions that proposed to remove the grove, as it was not an original part of Jeglič's design, it remains the main entry axis in the arboretum. The new pavilion lies transversely to the input axis, designed as a kind of expanded element of the fence. Access to the arboretum, between the canopies of sequoias, is conceptually different to the originally planned axial design. The visitor passes through the structure of the pavilion into the inside of the park and steps on its peripheral circular path.
The pavilion is a completely wooden structure, with wooden windows and ceiling. Large window frames follow the structure of the fence of the entry area and enable the desired transparent character of the building. We hope the outer shell of the building will age into a darker patinated shell, which will blend in with its natural surroundings, while the interior remains bright, warm and user-friendly.