Plečnik’s students in the collections of the Museum of Architecture and Design

The Chapel at Fužine Castle (MAO)
Curators: Cvetka Požar and Maja Vardjan

The furniture collection Articulum was designed in 1952 by Edvard Ravnikar and Jurij Jenšterle, then a graduate student of architecture. Ravnikar patented a wood joint that enabled the assembling and disassembling of different furniture elements without any professional help whatsoever.

After the Second World War, architects worked towards improving housing construction and housing culture, and were actively involved in reforming homes and designing objects that would satisfy the needs of everyday life. Architects advocated the use of new materials in furniture design, such as plywood, as an alternative to solid, steamed wood, as well as new design forms that enabled greater usability and modularity of furniture. New technologies and serial production that made furniture more affordable were also seen as an important factor.

The furniture collection Articulum was designed in 1952 by Edvard Ravnikar and Jurij Jenšterle*, then a graduate student of architecture. Ravnikar patented a wood joint that enabled the assembling and disassembling of different furniture elements without any professional help whatsoever. Publishing the prototypes of the collection (three chairs, a coffee table and a dining table), the magazine Architect offered the following explanation: »The new wood joint (patented), authored by Professor Edvard Ravnikar, is based on the principle that thin wooden parts are drilled longitudinally and joined with other parts of the wooden construction by means of a steel string inserted into the drill. Wooden parts are designed in such a way that they are haunched at the ends, so as to achieve a rigid joint without the use of adhesives, mosaics or any other known means of joinery.«* He used the principle of pre-stressed steel wires inserted into the wooden supporting structure. The same innovative principle, known in the modern bridge construction as »pre-stressing«, is characteristic also of his (slender) stone obelisk in the Concentration Camp Inmate Cemetery on the island of Rab.* Enabling simple assembling and disassembling, this construction principle was not planned to be applied only to furniture making (chairs, tables, beds, wardrobes), but also to all other areas where wooden constructions are used (house, boat, planes, etc.).*  

Ravnikar’s Articulum furniture collection is an example of self-assembly furniture, a very progressive idea for the Slovenian environment of the time which favoured heavy and mostly unaffordable period furniture. A well-designed and industrially made self-assembly furniture, on the other hand, represented exactly the opposite. The Swedish company Ikea has been capitalizing on this idea since 1956.*
  
With the help of Ljubljana based company Oprema-export (Opex), the test pieces of the collection were made by 1952.* For the realization phase of the Articulum furniture collection Ravnikar enlisted the help of France Ivanšek, then a student of architecture, who later gave the following description of his role in the project: »In December* 1952, Ravnikar sent me to visit Max Bill in Zurich to seek his professional opinion on the chair Articulum we had developed in Graben. /…/ Bill was kind to answer and so began our correspondence that stretched for many years. He gave a very positive review of Ravnikar’s prefabricated chair and thought that the chair could be marketed in Israel if the production could take place in Slovenia. However, after my return to Slovenia it became evident that our industry was not yet mature enough for such enterprises.«*
 
Prototypes of three different chairs and two types of tables (coffee and dining table) were made. The essential element of the Articulum furniture is its frame, composed of bone-like, knuckle-like forms (hence its name). The chairs have the same frame, but their seat and backrest may be changed: these two parts are made either of full, bent plywood or with perforated backrest, thereby creating an attractive pattern. The third version of the chair has the seat and the backrest made of two longitudinally and transversely intertwined pieces of leather, creating a reinforced seating part. The back legs of the chair with the perforated backrest were originally designed too upright, causing it to topple over. In a new prototype this was corrected by designing slightly curved back legs. In the technical sense this was hard to realise, as the legs were made of bent and lathe-turned wood, but the company had the machine which made this possible.

The two tables and chairs shown at the exhibition were lent by studio Ambient (Majda Kregar), for which we thank them. Our thanks also go to architect mag. Tomaž Krušec who provided comprehensive information on the making of Articulum chairs, and who, in cooperation with the students of class 2016/17 of the Faculty of Architecture, also reconstructed the Articulum chair.

Cvetka Požar

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*They were both referred to as designers in the article: Pohištvo »Articulum«, Arhitekt, 8, 1953, p. 26. Jurij Jenšterle graduated in Professor Edvard Ravnikar’s class on 11 December 1952.
*Pohištvo »Articulum«, op. cit., str. 26.
*Grega Košak, Karizma Ravnikarjeve ustvarjalne, pedagoške in javne celovitosti, »Ali mora biti ta hiša ravno taka«, Fakulteta za arhitekturo, Ljubljana 2010, str. 101.
*Pohištvo »Articulum«, op. cit., str. 26.
*In 1956, Ikea released the ready-to-assemble side table Lövet (leaf), which was delivered flat-packed. The idea, however, was first used by Michael Thonet in 1859 with his chair No. 14. The chair was composed of six steam bent solid wood parts, ten screws and two nuts. The nuts made it possible to transport the chair in separate parts and assemble it at its final destination. Sixteen unassembled No. 14 chairs could be packed into a crate with a volume of only one cubic meter.
*See: Pohištvo »Articulum, op. cit., p. 26.
*Ivanšek’s biography states that between 10 and 23 December 1952 he undertook an independent two-week journey to Switzerland, Zurich and Basel; he visited Max Bill and showed him the prototype of the Articulum chair. I would like to thank Martina Malešič for providing this information. The journey was also supported by the company Opex, see: Hommage à Edvard Ravnikar 1907–1993, France Ivanšek (ed.), Izdala France in Marta Ivanšek, Ljubljana 1995, p. 20.
*Nataša Koselj, Potrebe navadnih ljudi, Emzin, 9, ¾, 1999, str. 39.

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