The City Municipality of Celje sought to transform a historic girls' school building into DOM - a regional hub for culture, creativity, and urban happenings. Long underused, the building is brought to life as an open, public place where amateur culture, creative production and communities converge. 

Our role was to plan and navigate the early-stage renovation processes: developing the project brief, leading public participation, coordinating temporary use of the building, and managing stakeholder involvement throughout the design phase.

The project brief: an alignment tool between stakeholders and decision makers

In Slovenia, the project brief remains an underutilized tool for early public participation. Yet engaging stakeholders before design decisions are made offers numerous advantages. With the project still open to change, future users and decision-makers can find common grounds and genuinely shape the outcome. By contributing to the design brief and understanding the external constraints of the project, they gain a shared sense of ownership over results. Early involvement also mitigates the risk of cost overruns and schedule delays by surfacing and addressing frictions between the municipality, designers, and future users early on.

From day one we have invited future users of the hub - cultural workers, civic associations, and local creatives - into the conversation. The brief we have produced attentively studies their needs, maps the building's spatial capacities, and reflects on the broader context of central Celje. Beyond defining production studios and rehearsal spaces, we aimed to kickstart a future creative community and establish an efficient governance system that will support the hub over time. Through interviews, events, and collaborative workshops, we have built a lasting, productive relationship between the municipality and future tenants of the creative hub.

Temporary use brought life back into the building

A feasibility study confirmed that the existing structure could accommodate quality and contemporary spaces for a creative hub. It also revealed something less expected: the building, vacant for years, was in a good state and could be immediately activated as a spot for local creative production. Using portable furniture and equipment, we relocated all project meetings and participatory sessions into the unrenovated building itself. Open-door days reintroduced the former school to residents and local media, placing it back on the mental map of the city. During events, visitors of all ages playfully explored the spaces, while learning about the municipality's renovation plans firsthand.

We formalised a temporal use arrangement, giving future inhabitants free access to the building for workshops, rehearsals, and collaborative work and consequently bringing the building back to life well before construction began.