Exhibition opening 21 may at 6 pm   Functionality, form, production, and technological requirements (in particular typification and standardization), market performance, and socially balanced living conditions were all key considerations that guided Biba Bertok’s work as designer. Bertok designed more than forty furniture systems and programmes over the course of her career, most of them for serial production.   Bertok belonged to that body of architects and industrial designers who insisted that design is an integral part of any product. According to her, there were two ways of practicing her profession: the one adopted by the most accomplished, trailblazing designers searching for new visions of the future, and the other, made up of those who design for everyday life and industrial production (and are often overlooked in the Slovenian context). The latter, she wrote, are the “diligent designers” who aspire to elevate not only the aesthetic qualities of a design, but ...

In 2026, when many Slovenian museums and institutions are dedicating their activities to exploring and presenting the work of architect Vlasto Kopač (1913–2006), MAO is exhibiting his project The Path Along the Wire. Over the decades and through social changes, the path has changed its name—originally the Path Along the Wire of Occupied Ljubljana, it later became the Path of Remembrance and Comradeship, then the Avenue of Remembrance and Comradeship, the Green Ring, and finally simply PATH. It is a monument to occupation and resistance. It is a monument, but not an object; rather, it is a space that enables a ritual of commemoration through walking. At the same time, it serves as a recreational area, a city park, and a sports infrastructure. The Path Along the Wire is an unfinished, constantly evolving project. It began as a cart track that followed the traces of wartime-occupied Ljubljana, along the route of the barbed-wire perimeter that, for 1,117 days, separated the city from ...

Ecological Perspectives in the MAO Collection, 1930–1979   The exhibition opening will be on Thursday, 18th December, at 7 PM.   The exhibition Is Nature Modern? explores modernistic architecture and design’s relationship to nature and their approach to ecological thinking. The exhibition takes as its starting point the collection of the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) and its extensive selection of projects, objects, and documentation from the fields of architecture, design, and photography of the 20th century.   The Modernist ideal of progress, anchored in notions of continuous economic growth and industrial production, has particularly defined this century in the Global North. This ideal has directly contributed significantly to the depletion of natural resources and global warming. Modernism seems to have drawn a sharp divide between nature and society: through intellect, technology, and planning, humankind placed itself above and outside nature, and ...

The Ursuline Church of the Holy Trinity on Congress Square in Ljubljana (Carlo Martinuzzi, 1718–1726), has long been regarded as one of the finest – and most unusual – examples of Baroque architecture in Slovenia. Come the 20th century, it underwent an unexpected reinterpretation when the two leading Slovenian architects of the time, Jože Plečnik (1872–1957) and Edvard Ravnikar (1907–1993), adopted it as a cornerstone of their larger architectural vision. Both were in their own way committed to the discipline of the classical; and both perceived the Ursuline Church as a monument to a distinctive architectural culture that emerged out of the intersection of classical tradition and the authentic character of the local environment. Thanks to its exceptional quality, Baroque Ljubljana became, either explicitly or implicitly, a point of reference for other architects working in the city. While Baroque architecture was still largely viewed across Europe in the 20th century as a ...