Oton Jugovec was a leader of the "Veseli beraci" jazz orchestra in which he plays the saxophone and clarinet (1941-45). Soon after the war, he is a Tanjug correspondent in Gorizia, Italy. The same year he obtains a grant from the Czechoslovakian government to study architecture in Prague. He returns to Ljubljana in 1948 and enrolls at the Department of Architecture choosing the tutelage of prof. Ravnikar. In 1950 he established Bunker of Kolektiv B with Svetozar Krizaj, Uros Vajaga, Ferenc Smid, Eli Likar and others. This was the first architectural group after the war, which gains its reputation in competitions in the field of design and individual interior design projects.

In 1951 Jugovec completes a one-month practice at the Architectural and Planning department in Coventry, Great Britain. He started to work at Slovenija Projekt office in 1954 where he started to collaborate with Emil Medvescek. He designs the first project for prefabricated petrol station in Kranj in 1960. In sixties he begins to work on the design for the Jozef Stefan Nuclear Institute in Podgorica, near Ljubljana. In 1967 he leaves for Libya, where he works until 1969 within the framework of the Slovenija projekt in the Consortium of Business Association of the project-planning organizations of Slovenia. In 1969 he is appointed Director of the Regional Institute for Monumental Protection in Ljubljana, where he remains until his retirement in 1976. In 1978-81 he becomes active again and gets a job in the project and planning bureau of the Pionir engineering company where he designed the Kulturni dom Spanski borci.