The Faculty of Mathematics in Ljubljana, Slovenia by Bevk Perović Arhitekti has received the Emerging Architect Special Mention at the Mies van der Rohe Award 2007, which was announced last week.

The overall prize was went to architects Mansilla + Tuñón for the MUSAC Contemporary Art Museum of Castilla y León, Spain (see our earlier story for details and pictures).

The Faculty of Mathematics is a three-story addition to an existing two-storey building. Photos are © Miran Kambic.

Below is the Mies prize jury's citation:

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Emerging Architect Special Mention

Faculty of Mathematics
/Fakulteta za matematiko
, Ljubljana, Slovenia

by Matija Bevk, Vasa J. Perovic
, Bevk Perovic arhitekti

The new building for the Faculty of Mathematics, built in the University area of the city of Ljubljana, is not a building in a standard sense of the word. It is, in fact, an addition, a three-storey slab built on top of the existing two-storey building.

The design concept is based on the development of the idea of public spaces as a series of transparent 'rooms', carved out of the building mass and hovering above the city. 

At first glance a formally simple architecture is precisely formulated, whether one looks at the programmatic organisation or at the tactile treatment of surfaces.

The elegant glass skin, screenprinted with different densities of the same pattern, articulates the programmatic structure behind (different densities of the pattern correspond to different lighting conditions).

Simultaneously, seemingly random prints appear as if they are forming together an independent overall surface of the building. Only the public and communal spaces of the school have a glass skin without a printed pattern, thus establishing a dialogue between the interior and the city beyond.