Opening: June 15th at 18.00   Curators: Špela Šubic and Barbara Predan   The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) presents the exhibition How is a vase like a house? From the systemic to the fantastical, with designer Janja Lap, which will open on 8 June and showcase the works of architect and designer Janja Lap. This exceptional artist left the most profound mark on Slovenian home décor culture with her glass designs, the first of which she produced in the mid-1950s. While still a student of architecture under Professor Edvard Ravnikar she presented her designs at the exhibition Housing for Our Conditions in 1956, developing these contemporary, decorative glass and ceramic home accessories with the Boris Kidrič Glassworks from Rogaška Slatina.   Janja Lap explored glass throughout her long and diverse career in architecture, industrial design, teaching, and research as well as system and service design. Glass was her material of choice and the material that ...

+/– 1 °C In Search of Well-Tempered Architecture Over the past decade, ecology has had a significant impact on many disciplines and has become an integral part of developments within these disciplines. And architecture is no exception. Credit for the purported eco-friendly nature of architecture goes, however, to other engineering-related disciplines, with heat pumps, zero-energy house technology, recovery ventilation systems, and other innovations transforming our homes into high-tech machines intended to help us manage our energy consumption economically and efficiently. Although ecology, understood by many in architecture as ‘energy efficiency’, is an inescapable contextual component of modernity that defines architecture, it is addressed by architecture rather paradoxically. Instead of critically rearticu-lating its conceptual starting points, architecture tends to address ecological issues exclusively through applied technology hidden inside walls. ‘Energy effi-ciency’ ...

Main exhibition, Ravnikar Year 2023   Edvard Ravnikar (1907–1993) defined the space of modern Slovenian society and state, transformed our understanding of the role of the architect, and opened architecture to creative doubt and incomplete design experiments. The significance of Ravnikar’s legacy and the question of the preservation of architectural heritage of the 20th century calls for its actualisation in the spirit of the 21st century. Ravnikar’s spaces have significantly shaped the process of independent Slovenia, as well as its social and political upheavals; and they raise questions of accessible public space, energy, programme, and the seismic retrofitting of buildings. These challenges call for responsible interventions combining the preservation of heritage with the adaptation of such to a social and environmental present that is fundamentally different from Ravnikar’s time. These are the questions that the exhibition at MAO addresses. Based on ...

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LEGO # Plečnik, exhibition

Exhibition / 13. 7.—30. 9. 2023 / 00:00

Exhibition LEGO # Plečnik was a sideline event of the exhibition Universum Plečnik: Between Workshop and Myth. We put on display Lego creations erected by architecture students who explored the spatial concepts of Plečnik’s Ljubljana during the seminar and workshops.   The bricks with their modular nature were a challenge, in the first place because these “building materials” came in a limited range of colours, shapes and sizes. The basic bricks served as a starting point for creating occasionally very intricate and detailed structures of Plečnik’s architecture. Our aim was to go beyond a simple re-creation of buildings in the form of miniature replicas, so we used the bricks to recreate carefully abstracted architectural designs and details, which we rasterized during the assembly process. This required proper understanding of scale, volume, symmetry, basic patterns, and geometry. Our templates were scanned original architectural designs kept by MAO and the ...

Exhibition LEGO # Plečnik was a sideline event of the exhibition Universum Plečnik: Between Workshop and Myth. We put on display Lego creations erected by architecture students who explored the spatial concepts of Plečnik’s Ljubljana during the seminar and workshops.

 

The bricks with their modular nature were a challenge, in the first place because these “building materials” came in a limited range of colours, shapes and sizes. The basic bricks served as a starting point for creating occasionally very intricate and detailed structures of Plečnik’s architecture. Our aim was to go beyond a simple re-creation of buildings in the form of miniature replicas, so we used the bricks to recreate carefully abstracted architectural designs and details, which we rasterized during the assembly process. This required proper understanding of scale, volume, symmetry, basic patterns, and geometry. Our templates were scanned original architectural designs kept by MAO and the Plečnik Collection; they served as the basis that helped us adapt the scale to the size of details, architectural elements and, last but not least, the size of the brick used. By testing various brick combinations and exploring the materials and colours, the emerging shapes began to tell the stories of different spaces and their images, both at the scale of buildings and the city.

 

We saw the beautiful cultural avenue of Vegova Street come to life before our very eyes, demonstrating how various scales used in spatial design can result in diverse, open-content programmes. The National and University Library is identified by the column motif and the window of the grand reading room. Different materials are used so as to convey a clear and readable story. The colours of the stone and brick shine through the belfry of the Church of St. Michael on the Marshes, while the whiteness and a forest of columns lead the eye to the Garden of All Saints, the monumental gateway to the Žale cemetery. The intricate construction of the Three Bridges in the centre of Ljubljana invites us to rethink the historic context that shapes the most vibrant public space in the city centre today. The collection of models of Plečnik’s architecture is completed with a detail of the Cathedral of Freedom. The mystical nature of this unrealised project solicits debate on national symbols, leaving us in the domain of the utopian.

So what does Plečnik have in common with Lego bricks? The creative force that pushes the boundaries of what is possible.

The exhibition has been such a success that we decided to put it on show again, this time to a different space, and with an addition – the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, which Plečnik designed in Belgrade.

 

Mentors:

Prof. Alenka Fikfak, PhD; Asst. Janez Peter Grom, PhD; Asst. Kristijan Lavtižar, Faculty of Architecture

Natalija Lapajne, curator, Museum of Architecture and Design

Workshop photos:

Ana Šink Krenner, Kaja Križ

Model photos:

Jure Žigon, Filip Živković

 

 

Students:

Vit Balas, Lana Bavcon, Nina Beganović, Nea Bekonjič, Benjamin Boben, Manca Gjura Godec, Vladislav Kvitka, Lara Korošec, Eva Košak, Ana Kovačevič, Nejra Kovačević, Ksenja Kozamernik, Kaja Križ, Eleonora Lazarova, Maruša Legat, Lucija Lohkar, Tisa Lozej, Žan Ložar, Tilen Mavrič, Lara Mrak, Tomaž Ogrič, Adrijan Piano, Lucija Petrinić, Marko Rapuc, Stanislav Rudenko, Filip Slakan Jakovljević, Jakob Smrekar, Arne J. Stare, Samanta Šalamon, Uroš Tesić, Vladimir Tripković, Barbara Veronica Vasić, Iza Verbovšek, Filip Živković

 

Our special thanks goes to Ms Mija Razpotnik for donating Lego bricks to the Museum of Architecture and Design.

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Exhibition LEGO # Plečnik was a sideline event of the exhibition Universum Plečnik: Between Workshop and Myth. We put on display Lego creations erected by architecture students who explored the spatial concepts of Plečnik’s Ljubljana during the seminar and workshops.

 

The bricks with their modular nature were a challenge, in the first place because these “building materials” came in a limited range of colours, shapes and sizes. The basic bricks served as a starting point for creating occasionally very intricate and detailed structures of Plečnik’s architecture. Our aim was to go beyond a simple re-creation of buildings in the form of miniature replicas, so we used the bricks to recreate carefully abstracted architectural designs and details, which we rasterized during the assembly process. This required proper understanding of scale, volume, symmetry, basic patterns, and geometry. Our templates were scanned original architectural designs kept by MAO and the Plečnik Collection; they served as the basis that helped us adapt the scale to the size of details, architectural elements and, last but not least, the size of the brick used. By testing various brick combinations and exploring the materials and colours, the emerging shapes began to tell the stories of different spaces and their images, both at the scale of buildings and the city.

 

We saw the beautiful cultural avenue of Vegova Street come to life before our very eyes, demonstrating how various scales used in spatial design can result in diverse, open-content programmes. The National and University Library is identified by the column motif and the window of the grand reading room. Different materials are used so as to convey a clear and readable story. The colours of the stone and brick shine through the belfry of the Church of St. Michael on the Marshes, while the whiteness and a forest of columns lead the eye to the Garden of All Saints, the monumental gateway to the Žale cemetery. The intricate construction of the Three Bridges in the centre of Ljubljana invites us to rethink the historic context that shapes the most vibrant public space in the city centre today. The collection of models of Plečnik’s architecture is completed with a detail of the Cathedral of Freedom. The mystical nature of this unrealised project solicits debate on national symbols, leaving us in the domain of the utopian.

So what does Plečnik have in common with Lego bricks? The creative force that pushes the boundaries of what is possible.

The exhibition has been such a success that we decided to put it on show again, this time to a different space, and with an addition – the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, which Plečnik designed in Belgrade.

 

Mentors:

Prof. Alenka Fikfak, PhD; Asst. Janez Peter Grom, PhD; Asst. Kristijan Lavtižar, Faculty of Architecture

Natalija Lapajne, curator, Museum of Architecture and Design

Workshop photos:

Ana Šink Krenner, Kaja Križ

Model photos:

Jure Žigon, Filip Živković

 

 

Students:

Vit Balas, Lana Bavcon, Nina Beganović, Nea Bekonjič, Benjamin Boben, Manca Gjura Godec, Vladislav Kvitka, Lara Korošec, Eva Košak, Ana Kovačevič, Nejra Kovačević, Ksenja Kozamernik, Kaja Križ, Eleonora Lazarova, Maruša Legat, Lucija Lohkar, Tisa Lozej, Žan Ložar, Tilen Mavrič, Lara Mrak, Tomaž Ogrič, Adrijan Piano, Lucija Petrinić, Marko Rapuc, Stanislav Rudenko, Filip Slakan Jakovljević, Jakob Smrekar, Arne J. Stare, Samanta Šalamon, Uroš Tesić, Vladimir Tripković, Barbara Veronica Vasić, Iza Verbovšek, Filip Živković

 

Our special thanks goes to Ms Mija Razpotnik for donating Lego bricks to the Museum of Architecture and Design.

Share
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