The Structure of Modernity: Edvard Ravnikar and His Quests

With his work method architect Edvard Ravnikar embodied the belief that creativity emerges from embracing creative doubt and through critical analysis of the situation at hand, two foundations of any original intervention in the world. Amidst the social and environmental changes of the 21st century, Ravnikar’s architecture is therefore more than just a chapter in the history of modernism – it is also an intellectual challenge that demonstrates how, by cultivating creative doubt in space, drawing, painting, and words an architect intervenes in the social realm and thus lays the groundwork for a better world.  

The bilingual scientific monograph The Structure of Modernity: Edvard Ravnikar and His Quests presents new contributions by researchers on the work and thought of Edvard Ravnikar, who shift the research focus from examining his realized works toward the architect’s specific creative process. In the Slovenian as well as international history of architectural modernism five aspects of Ravnikar’s work in particular represent intellectual and creative turning points. Susanna Campeotto writes about Ravnikar’s memorial designs from the 1950s and early 60s, through which the architect created a new memorial language, one intimately connected with the landscape and which incorporated his experience of Plečnik’s School into the visual language of modernism. Aleš Vodopivec understands the design concept and the construction process of the Regional People’s Committee building in Kranj as an original synthesis of modernism and tradition that constitutes the basic cornerstone of Slovenian architectural assertiveness in the 20th century. Vladimir Kulić reads Ravnikar’s design process for Revolution Square in Ljubljana as the making of a new architectural knowledge that is grounded in tradition yet emancipated from it. Ravnikar’s unrealized urban design plans for Skopje and Venice underpin search by Miloš Kosec for traces of Ravnikar’s radical urban design project that is informed by a critical analysis of the problems that orthodox modernism generated rather than resolved, as became increasingly obvious in the 1960s. Martina Malešič investigates the way the architect and his students tackled the issue of modern housing, highlighting the role of Ravnikar’s seminar as a creative laboratory that generated ideas and disseminated them among the professional and general public. Nika Novak and Maruša Dražil discuss professional dilemmas in accessioning and processing Ravnikar’s legacy at the Museum of Architecture and Design, in the process raising questions of storage and accessibility of architectural archives in the 21st century. The visual material was selected from Ravnikar’s archive in the MAO collection. Peter Žargi’s photographs comment on the condition, state of conservation, and (in)appropriate use of Ravnikar’s work today.