Ilirija Sports City in Ljubljana Wins Silver at the 2026 IDPA Japan Design Awards

Ljubljana’s Ilirija Sports City has received a Silver award at the 2026 IDPA Japan Design Awards, marking another international recognition for a project that was also awarded Gold in the Leisure category at the WAN Awards 2026 in March.

Designed by Lorenzateliers, led by Peter Lorenz, the complex opened in March 2025, almost 25 years after the studio won the original design competition. Built on the site of a 1929 outdoor pool designed by Stanko Bloudek, the project preserves and renews a historic location at the edge of Tivoli Park. Rather than moving the facility to the city’s outskirts, the development restores Latterman Avenue as a pedestrian link between the city centre and the park, while retaining the listed Bloudek entrance building.

A curved roof covering 12,000 square metres brings together a 50-metre competition pool, a 25-metre training pool, four sports halls, a café, a museum and a public square. Above the swimming hall, a light steel structure spans 54 metres. Photovoltaic panels and geothermal heat pumps support the building’s zero-energy design, with fossil fuels excluded from its energy concept.

The 50-metre competition pool and the 25-metre training pool were built using Myrtha’s modular stainless-steel technology, a system that has also been used at six editions of the Olympic Games. The solution provides a durable, precision-engineered structure designed to support reliable long-term performance while meeting the facility’s technical and architectural requirements.

Architectural critic Christian Kühn described Ilirija as “a work of spatial art” and “a city within a city”. With two major international awards in 2026, the project stands as a significant example of how sport, culture and urban planning can be integrated in the centre of a European capital.