KIP arhitekti Sets Three Planted Islands Inside Savin Sever's Heritage Printing House in Ljubljana

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This article covers topics related to Office Building, Architecture, Open Building, Built Environment Interiors, Architecture Project, Building Design. Halcom's 1,450 m² Ljubljana offices float curtained, plant-topped galleries free of a protected printing hall, letting the old structure stay in charge.

Halcom's 1,450 m² Ljubljana offices float curtained, plant-topped galleries free of a protected printing hall, letting the old structure stay in charge.

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UNI Editorial published Blog under Office Building, Architecture on Oct 10, 2026

Office fit-outs inside listed industrial buildings usually go one of two ways. Either the new program swallows the hall with partitions and dropped ceilings, or the designers treat the shell as a museum piece and tiptoe around it so carefully that the workplace never feels like it belongs. For the IT company Halcom, KIP arhitekti, led by Ana Kosi and Ognen Arsov, took a third route. Inside the heritage-protected former Mladinska knjiga printing house in Ljubljana, designed by Savin Sever, they placed three freestanding galleries in the open aisle and kept every one of them clear of the existing structure.

That decision to set the new volumes back from the old frame is what makes the 1,450 m² project worth studying. It keeps Sever's load-bearing system fully legible, and it turns the space between old and new into usable territory: passages, lounges and daylight corridors that line up with the original windows. The islands themselves are soft-edged, ringed with planters, and wrapped at ground level in curtains, so the result reads less like an office layout and more like a small landscape assembled inside an industrial hall.

The Heritage Hall as a Frame

Open office aisle with a grey shelving unit and a glass meeting room under an orange V-shaped column draped in trailing vines

Glass-walled meeting room framed by two orange V-columns and a pleated curtain, with ivy spilling from the planter above

V-shaped orange column rising beside sheer curtains below a perforated metal planter with pothos trailing down

The brief from the heritage context was clear: the printing house sets the rules. KIP's response was to make the new insertions read as furniture at architectural scale rather than as building. The orange V-shaped steel supports that carry the islands are the boldest gesture in the project, and their colour is a deliberate signal that they belong to the new layer, not to Sever's concrete.

We think the colour choice is smart for a protected interior. Instead of trying to blend in, the new structure declares itself, which makes it easier for you to read which parts of the room are original. The trailing pothos that drop from the planters above soften what could otherwise be a rather insistent palette.

Three Islands, Set Back from the Structure

Central aisle between two planter-topped volumes, with orange V-columns, a white stair and a reception desk under a long skylight

Open office aisle with a curtained, plant-topped pod on the left and desks under a long skylight

Raised white planter volume on V-shaped orange columns, with pink curtains and a glazed meeting room below, lit by rooflights

Halcom occupies two thirds of one aisle of the building's tripartite plan, a long bay under a continuous rooflight. The three islands are placed according to how the company's programmes need to work together, and their offsets from the existing columns create pockets of different character along the aisle: a reception zone here, a quieter desk cluster there, an open circulation spine running through the middle.

The central view down the aisle shows why this works. Because nothing touches the old structure, your eye travels the full length of the hall unobstructed, and the skylight remains a single uninterrupted line. The islands sit in the room like objects on a table, which is exactly the relationship a heritage interior needs.

Curtains, Glass and Degrees of Privacy

Meeting table seen through glass walls and sheer curtains, with an orange V-column, white stair and glass block wall glowing at the side

Narrow corridor running between a draped curtain and a glass block wall, with warm light and a hanging vine

Green kitchen island with three apples beside an orange steel column, backed by a glass block wall and stacked cardboard boxes

At ground level the islands are as transparent as possible: glazed meeting rooms with nothing heavier than a pleated curtain between occupants and the open floor. Each ground-floor enclosure can be fully wrapped in semitransparent fabric, so privacy becomes a matter of drawing a curtain rather than building a wall.

This is a low-tech, high-flexibility approach that we would like to see more often in workplace design. A glass block wall along one edge adds another register of translucency, glowing warmly behind a narrow corridor and backing the green kitchen island. The layering of glass, glass block and textile gives the plan several thresholds without a single solid partition in the open hall.

Stair and Reception at the Centre

Curved timber reception desk beneath a white steel stair and planter balcony, with trailing leaves and daylight from a rooflight strip

Reception desk with cut-out wooden lettering below a planted mezzanine, with a blue sofa and desks in soft daylight

White steel staircase rising between planted balconies and pleated curtains, with a blurred figure climbing in skylight

A white steel staircase rises between the planted edges of the islands, and the curved timber reception desk sits directly beneath it. Putting the arrival point under the circulation is efficient, but it also means visitors immediately see the vertical dimension of the scheme: the upper decks, the greenery, the people moving between levels.

The stair is detailed lightly enough that it reads as part of the insertion rather than a structural event. In the daylight from the rooflight strip it almost dissolves, which keeps attention on the hall above.

Planters as Balustrades, Decks as Rooms

Upper-level lounge with wooden chairs, a blue round table and white pouf seats behind a planted balustrade overlooking the desks

White steel staircase beside a linen curtain and perforated planter with trailing vines under skylight daylight

Corner of a pleated linen curtain enclosure topped by a perforated white planter spilling with vines

The first-floor edges of every island are lined with planters, and the architects name greenery as one of the main elements of the ambience. The perforated white metal planters do double duty as balustrades, so the plants are not decoration added afterwards but the actual edge condition of the upper workspaces.

Up on the decks, the experience changes. You sit at a round table among wooden chairs and poufs, looking out over the desks below through a screen of leaves, closer to the rooflight and the old roof structure. It is a mezzanine that behaves like a terrace, and that shift in register is where the islands justify their height.

Lounges in the Leftover Spaces

Double-height lounge with white armchairs and a red table on a round blue rug facing a tall gridded window

Lounge corner with a blue sofa, white armchair and yellow stool on a round navy rug beneath a skylight

Underside of the white steel stair with a blue sofa, yellow stool and pink side table on a round rug

The offsets that keep the islands free of the structure also produce the project's best informal spaces. A double-height lounge faces one of the original gridded windows, with white armchairs, a red table and a round blue rug, while smaller seating corners tuck under the stair and below the skylight.

The palette here, blue sofas, yellow stools, pink side tables, extends the orange columns into a loose primary-colour system. It risks feeling playful to the point of whimsy, but against the grey shell and white steel it stays controlled. More importantly, these lounges sit where the passages align with the windows, so the most social areas get the best daylight.

Plans and Drawings

Floor plan drawing of a long office level with desk clusters, meeting rooms, restrooms and two stairs between structural columns

Upper floor plan drawing showing two enclosed desk volumes with workstations, plus a lounge and meeting area at the left end

Long section drawing of a sawtooth-roofed office building with stairs, mezzanine volumes and parked cars in the undercroft below

Cross section drawing of an office floor with a central mezzanine box, concrete piers and a car parked beneath

Hand sketch section showing a hatched volume inserted between slabs on piers, with arrows for loads and a sun at upper right

Hand sketch section of a low volume with planters and a rooftop desk above, seating below and sun rays at upper right

Plan sketch of a long rectangular bay with three grey volumes, two small stairs, a column grid and arrows marking sunlight from one side

Row of small section sketches showing people at desks, a planted rooftop terrace, lounge chairs and standing tables beneath green roofs

The plans make the strategy explicit: desk clusters, meeting rooms and two stairs distributed between the existing column grid, with the upper floor carrying two enclosed desk volumes and a lounge at one end. The long section shows the sawtooth roof that floods the aisle with light and the parking undercroft beneath the office level, a reminder of how much of the original industrial building remains in use around the fit-out.

The hand sketches are the most revealing set. They show the islands as hatched volumes slipped between existing slabs and piers, with arrows tracing sunlight from one side of the bay, and a sequence of sections testing desks, lounges and planted roofs. The design logic was clearly worked out through light and section first, layout second.

Why This Project Matters

Adaptive reuse of protected industrial buildings often gets reduced to a choice between preservation and usefulness. Halcom Offices shows that the choice is false if you are disciplined about one rule: the new work does not touch the old. By setting three islands back from Savin Sever's structure, KIP arhitekti kept the printing house legible and gained a set of in-between spaces that a conventional fit-out would have given away to partitions.

The project also makes a quiet argument about workplace flexibility. Curtains instead of walls, planters instead of railings, passages aligned with existing windows: these are inexpensive, reversible moves, and reversibility is exactly what a heritage building should ask of its tenants. If the company moves out, the islands could leave and the hall would remain intact. That is a standard more office interiors in listed buildings should be held to.

Halcom Offices by KIP arhitekti (lead architects Ana Kosi and Ognen Arsov), Ljubljana, Slovenia. Area: 1,450 m². Completed 2023. Photography by Ana Skobe.

About the Studio

KIP arhitekti

Official website of KIP arhitekti, one of the studios behind this project.

kip.si

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