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FOUR YOUNG SLOVENE ARCHITECTS
Slovenia is situated in the Middle Europe, between Austria, Italy, Hungary and Croatia. Once the most northerly Yugoslav Republic, Slovenia declared, and after a skirmish with the Yugoslav Army, achieved independence in 1991. The following year in January, it was recognized as an independent state by all the European Union member states. Today it is a country with a population of two million inhabitants and extending over approximately 20,000 km2 in area. The capital city is Ljubljana.
The greatest Slovene architect to date is Joze Plecnik. Born in Ljubljana in 1872, he was educated in Ljubljana, Graz and Vienna where, as Otto Wagner`s student, he also graduated. Plecnik believed in the noble mission of the architect and architectureís ethical function. He advocated for the idea that todayís architecture must emerge from the architecture of the past. He considered traditional heritage not as a restriction to the ìalready existentî but rather as an inexhaustible source of creativity. Despite the fact that he made his creations during the period of the great modernism movement, he rarely made any comments about happenings on the architectural scene. He shared the view that:
“As I contemplate these modern trends, I have a feeling that we, in Europe, are lost. Le Corbusier, for example, seems to negate architecture. For him, it is a social means, a tool he uses to help man. It is a sign of the law of the commandments: love thy neighbour. And in this respect it certainly is beautiful, the most beautiful thing in the world. In my opinion the only solution for Europe is in the house, in the house given over to the family. Yet on the other hand, arcus, architecture, signifies something which binds us with the highest. It is like a rainbow linking this life with what is beyond ....” (1)
He was one of those architects who did not discuss the relationship between architecture and art. For him, architecture always was an art.
As for the architect Edvard Ravnikar...
I first met Ravnikar a year before he died. Upon our request, he used to come to his office at the faculty every Tuesday evening where he related his experiences to a small group of students. This was a special architectural lesson.
Ravnikar had been Plecnik's student, but left his teacher after graduation in Ljubljana to join Le Corbusier. Here, he closely got acquainted with the principles of modern architecture, from where he brought his experiences back to Slovene space. A book entitled "Hommage to Edvard Ravnikar" has been published about his work, and a comprehensive presentation of this master of the modern is still anticipated.
Slovene architecture is today still characterized by the work and ideas of Plecnik, Ravnikar and some other Slovene architects while, especially in the case of the younger generation foreign influence (ranging for admiration of the Finnish "Architecture of Silence" to enthusiasm about the New York and London avant-garde) must not be ignored. It is a case of a mixture of several events and a variety of starting-points by various authors.
Defining the expression " young Slovene architecture" would require a thorough study and probably also a time distance. This is not the purpose of this discussion. I would like to present the projects of four young Slovene architects. In this way it will be possible to create an image of what, inter alia, is going on, on the Slovene architectural scene.
The architects, Aljosa Kolenc, Mateja Medvedic, Igor Kebel and David Bizovicar do not represent a group or movement. These are independent authors whose projects, in a way, extend to the boundaries of architecture while at the same time deal with the fundamental issues of this profession, such as, geometry, the proportional system, materials, movement, the program, etc. Their work does not fall under dominant architectural practice and as such remains somewhat "undigested". And this is one of the reasons for selecting these particular authors.
Architect: Aljosa Kolenc
Project: The Matter of Form
In 1992, Aljosa Kolenc, together with his co-workers won the competition for the design of a new graphic image for the Slovene oil company, Petrol. Three years later, the same company commissioned him for the project "The Comprehensive Architectural and Graphic Image 2000" in which it was required to make radical changes to the existing architectural sign system. The essential move taken by Aljosa in the project was that he separated the architectural system and the sign system into two independent marking segments.
Through a comparative analysis of the sign systems of various oil companies, he proved that the major distinguishing characteristic is achieved through a graphic system which is "pasted", in all cases, on a very similar architectural system. The objects serve only as an advertising background. The architect departed on the premise of this very dichotomy that architectural signalling obviously lagged behind the signalling system.
He used the arch construction as a sign. His thesis is that the construction becomes a sign the moment it exceeds the functional aspect of use in such a way that it does not negate it, but only internally exceeds it. There is therefore no need to additionally cover, as a signalling system, a construction that serves as a sign.
It is also important to point out the fact that petrol stations today represent one of the most frequent landscape elements. Like the car, they are one of the symbols of our civilization, although they have been neglected by the architectural profession. Aljosa took the opportunities offered by the wide presence of these facilities in space.
And lastly, the architect, in the project of a service facility intended for such a commonplace activity as is the supply of petrol to vehicles, chose the proportional system as the essential provision. He established that the object of form is more effective than any other aspect. As he noted in his remarks about the project: "The object of form is the object before any issues of functionalisation, economisation, expedience, ergonomisation and, today, ecologisation and allows for the joint consideration of the formal and material sides and stitches both interpretations together".
Architect: David Bizovicar
Project: Voyager
David Bizovicar dedicated the last years of his studies at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana to the dimensional analysis of Plecnik's architecture, which was also the subject of his degree. The projects with which he has been engaged in since 1995 only indirectly relate to his research work. He realized his first project (Voyager) in the SOU Kapelica Gallery in September 1995. He entirely covered the gallery area (a former chapel) with lead plates. This created an extraordinary experience, as if the surfaces of the room were gravitating towards the visitor. The space acquired a new "weight" and different dimensions. In one of the otherwise uniformly treated walls, he left an opening which introduces a feeling of uneasiness into a minimalistically treated space. He placed in it a goose wing and a bottle with mercury.
He completed work on the next room known as "Over Whelmed by Heaven (the Rain Room) “ in September 1996. The basic material used was copper.
Currently he is working on a third project which he intends to put up in the Modern Gallery in Ljubljana. He will be using mercury. ( photo Marko Modic )
Architect: Mateja Medvedic
Project: Through the Looking Glass
Children are the most demanding commissioners, since their conception of the world is too complicated to be grasped by our routinised way of thinking. As Exupery wrote in the Little Prince: "Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves and it is tiresome for children to be always explaining things to them".
Mateja Medvedic set out to deal with this very task. She worked on a project of eight objects which serve something, as unpredictable as child play.
As a starting point she chose Lewis Caroll's tale, "Through the Looking Glass", in which Alice, through a mirror, steps into a mirror world in which all things and all proportions are distorted. A collection of these contradictions makes up a universe consisting of only the positive, in which Alice as the advocate for rationality and realness becomes an alien and monster. Mateja made an architectural "Reflection in the Mirror". She termed the eight objects: the Looking Glass Garden, the Looking Glass House, the Railway, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Water, Humpty Dumpty sat on the Wall, the Knight on the Horse and the Theatre. The individual figure interprets the chessboard field which Alice, as a pawn, must cover in order to become queen in the eighth field.
Mateja made the objects out of wood, metal and polyester. With these children will make their own small world which the adults are just not capable of conceiving.
Architect: Igor Kebel
Project: A Viewpoint has no Place
Igor Kebel has been working on issues concerning the effects of the scientific discoveries of recent decades and the development of new media technology on spatial planning.
We have already accepted the fact that computers in architecture are, today, an indispensable tool. The question however is whether the role of the computer is simply to ensure greater efficiency and the faster drawing of plans (and thus one of the characteristic products of the consumer society) or whether it allows (and calls) for a new way of thinking about space and, in this way, raises questions about the core, itself, of architecture.
Igor defends the thesis that architecture is lagging behind in development and that it urgently needs to be redefined. This does not refer to the architecture of the future; the new media technology already dominates part of the world. Usurpation has already began.
In the paper entitled “A Case Against Architecture” Igor wrote, among other things that: “The new sociological models of living communities in which an individual performs work, entertains himself and educates himself at the same ìentranceî location, wipe out polarisation between the public and private and wipe out boundaries between the exterior and interior. Materialness avoids the non-material, finiteness gives room to processuality, linear definitions are eliminated by the thesis of high level complex theories. And last but not least, important for the designer of spatial structures: ( sic ) the quattrocento perspective geometry has been replaced by the pixel geometry of real time. (...)
The evolution of knowledge about geometry and the evolution of human perception are marching together with advances in digital and telecommunications technology. Where once used to be a window with a distant horizon is today a screen with a cathode ray tube which with its lack of depth has the effect of being more real than the real, and where the focal point of perspective pictures once used to be, are today variable values of binary records.
The geometry of clearly definable edges has been replaced by a hybrid combination of complex surfaces and textures; we can no longer justify the perception of single plane linear form. The new digital tools, waiting for the appropriate moment to top up our creative thinking are, right now, already offering equivalent circumstances for mastering the Old and New Worlds. What is going on in the film industry and in industrial design will (in case it hasn't yet) happen also in the rigid ìkingdomî of architecture and urbanism. No new formalistic symbolism is meant here or conception of collective metaphors and least the impenitent ideals from the past. The reflection of parallel worlds in real space will be free , and as it seems , even trans-geographical and non-linear fragmented entities.
Instant digital world has been already freed of all reflections.
And lastly, a quid pro quo. I once saw a postcard in the show window of the Anonimous Gallery which carried the message that "an artist who cannot speak English is no artist". For the purposes of this paper I will paraphrase, to me, an unknown author who stated that: "An architect who cannot understand (the) technology is no architect". “
Petra Ceferin
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