Janez Koželj

Architect Janez Koželj, born in Ljubljana in 1945, began his professional career by working at Studio Znak and the Kras Group and editing AB magazine for many years. At the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana, he introduced urban design with a seminar and the City Architecture course, which he taught from 1983 to 2013. From 2006 to 2023, he was the deputy mayor of the City Municipality of Ljubljana in the role of city architect. He was one of the protagonists of the movement for the establishment of contextualism in architecture and urbanism, on which he based the principles of sustainable development of Slovenian cities in theory and practice. In numerous works, which he managed to realize with co-authors, he researched the possibilities for adapting different types of buildings, constructions and materials to different tasks and placement conditions. Of these, it is worth mentioning: a residential and commercial building on Poljanska cesta in Ljubljana (1988), the Poljane gym in Ljubljana (1991), the experimental block Novi Tabor in Ljubljana (1991), a group of houses in a neighborhood in Graz (1998), the Portoval center in Novi town (2003; co-author J. Jaki), the highway viaduct Črni kal (2004; co-author and construction M. Pipenbaher), several public buildings, family houses and footbridges made of wooden structures. He published several monographs and received several professional awards at home and abroad.