Vision and Reality: Evolution of the Winning Competition Entry for the New Town Hall Complex in LjubljanaIlkaČerpesauthorThe urban and architectural design competition for a new town hall was executed in 2009 by the Municipality of Ljubljana. The main question of the competition was if the new complex of public activities and public buildings could reinforce the urban development of the eastern edge of the existing city centre where extensive brownfield areas and abandoned industrial zones had been stopping the urban growth for years. The intervention site comprises an area of 3 hectares (30.000 square metres) and currently no active public functions or buildings are situated there. However, all around there are many important fragments of architectural heritage from different historical eras (a protected old sugar factory from the first half of the 18th century, a small Baroque palace from the 18th century, a river barrier on the Ljubljanica from the 20th century by the famous Slovenian architect Plečnik and an excellent example of the 20th century modernist architecture in the form of a double round parking garage); however all of these structures are shrinking in terms of physical and functional conditions. A huge effort from the winning architectural team and the competition jury was made to preserve the heritage by the integration of all existing protected and unprotected historical building fragments into the building complex of a new municipal town hall in the sense of design and function. But further development of the project shows that they had underestimated the obstacles related to high investment costs and legal procedures that are not defined well enough. Currently, the development of the project has been halted and, in fact, a very small possibility of realisation exists. The scope of this paper is to discuss the main reasons for the project failure, which lie in legal obstacles and unsuccessfully provided public investment strategies, and to propose the possible follow-up activities for a more proactive safeguarding of the cultural heritage in the fields of architecture and urban design.02. Urbanisme09. Aspects économiques et sociaux de la conservation11. Protection juridique et administration03. Législations nationales et régionales05. Europe2014ICOMOS/SIChapitre de livres