In 2026, the AA Nanotourism Visiting School returns to Ljubljana for a third consecutive year, continuing its investigation into the city through architectural observations, critical tourism, and site-specific action focusing on the work of Jože Plečnik. Building on discoveries and collaborations established in previous editions, this year’s programme focuses on Plečnik’s micro-ambients: intimate spatial moments, thresholds, and carefully choreographed situations that inform everyday life in the city.

While Plečnik’s work is often read through monuments, ensembles, and urban gestures, much of the power of his interventions lies in the smaller scale: the canopy of the Central Market, the banks of the Ljubljanica that bring the river to citizens, and pyramids and obelisks marking axes in the city are just some examples. These spatial devices, conceived for a different social and political context, today operate within a city transformed by tourism, climate pressures, new forms of public use, and shifting ideas of heritage and authorship.

The 2026 workshop will investigate selected sites in Ljubljana where Plečnik’s works already structure everyday urban experience, such as the Mirje Pyramid or the Vegova street interventions. Each location will be approached not as a static heritage object, but as a living spatial condition in flux, activated through the introduction of a 1:1 contemporary architectural response that mirrors, extends, distorts, or critically reinterprets Plečnik’s urban interventions. Conceived as spatial companions, developed through close observation, drawing, and on-site construction, the interventions will aim to reveal how spatial conditions are negotiated, adapted, or contested amid contemporary urban life.

The workshop will kick off with a symposium on August 28 at MAO, featuring lectures by Eva Gusel, Miloš Kosec, and Klaske Havik.

*More details about the symposium coming soon.

Applications on: www.nanotourism.aaschool.ac.uk

AA Nanotourism team:

Aljoša Dekleva — Programme Head

Vid Žnidaršič — Programme Head

Bryce Suite — Invited Mentor

In collaboration with: FA, Faculty of Architecture, Ljubljana; TU Wien, Austria; MAO, Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana