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@Miran Kambic; Plecnik’s Architecture, Ljubljana, Slovenia

LOCATION

Ljubljana
Slovenia

COURSE DESCRIPTION

For its 10th edition, the AA nanotourism Visiting School will take place in the central European, pocket-size capital, Ljubljana, Slovenia, where several works of the architect Jože Plečnik were recently listed by the UNESCO World Heritage.

The works of Jože Plečnik in Ljubljana “present an example of a human-centred urban design” (UNESCO) that elevates the public space of the city as well as contributes to distinct recognizability and architectural identification of Ljubljana. Furthermore, the set of works is protected as a whole, rather than isolated architectural fragments. The value of Plečnik’s contribution to Ljubljana has been recognized as an urban whole.

Yet, Ljubljana is a vibrant city facing contemporary challenges from the overwhelming saturation of international daily visitors to the absolute commodification of public spaces. Plečnik's work and persona have been too often superficially abused for shallow tourist consumables and the qualities of his work, underlined by UNESCO, remain largely invisible to visitors and inhabitants alike. How does one reconcile Plečnik’s ambitions with contemporary city life? This is what AA Nanotourism Ljubljana 2024 will explore, test and experiment on.

We will aim to develop 1:1 scale, conceptual, locally-specific interventions in the form of built installations, events and strategies. Through collaboration with local stakeholders and a set of experts, we will imagine and implement future collaborative prototypes of locally responsible tourism.

ABOUT NANOTOURISM

AA nanotourism Visiting School is an architectural educational programme focusing on nanotourism - a creative critique of the current environmental, social and economic downsides of conventional tourism. Through critical thinking and close collaboration with local stakeholders, we focus on developing nanotourism case studies to reveal hidden aspects of the particular context addressing the place, its users, and locally available materials.

Over the past decade, the AA Nanotourism program has produced numerous student projects that have gained recognition and been exhibited by prestigious institutions worldwide. These include the London Design Festival in 2018, the Oslo Architecture Triennale in 2019, the Vienna Design Week in 2020, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in 2021, and the BIO27 Ljubljana in 2022.

APPLICATIONS

You can make an application by sending a CV (one page) and portfolio (max. 5MB) to nanotourism@aaschool.ac.uk
Subject of email: Application for AA nanotourism

Upon review, candidates will be contacted with further instructions. A limited amount of scholarships will be available.

Deadline for applications is Sunday 26 May.

FEES

The AA Visiting School requires a fee of £860 per participant, which includes a £60 Visiting Membership fee, payable by all participants.
Fees cover the entire programme and provision of basic building materials. Fees do not include flights or other modes of transportation to and from the workshop area.

Fees do not cover accommodation in Ljubljana.

20% bursaries available to current AA students, your fee will be altered upon AA log in during the registration. If you have any issues, please get in touch with the Visiting School office.

MENTORS

Featured

Programme Head / Mentor

Aljosa Dekleva (b. 1972) graduated at Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana and received Master degree in Architecture with Distinction from Architectural Association in London in 2002. He co-directs the architectural practice Dekleva Gregoric Architects pursuing the concept of research by design and design by research with the aim to challenge the obvious by building architectures of various scales and programmes worldwide. Since 2014 He runs an experimental teaching and research programme AA Nanotourism Visiting School at the AA. With Tina Gregorič he curated the Slovenian national pavilion Home at Arsenale at Venice Biennale 2016. He was teaching architecture as a guest professor at Université de Montréal in Canada, ENSA Paris Val de Seine in France, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and as a Gehry Chair 2019 at Daniels in Toronto, Canada.

www.dekleva-gregoric.com

Invited Mentor

Amin Taha was born in Berlin and has been settled in the UK since 1974. After working in the offices of Zaha Hadid, Wilkinson Eyre and others he began an independent studio in 2005, later incorporating Groupwork as an Employee Ownership Trust. As well as running the design and detailing of projects Amin has taught, written and lectured on architecture, sat on the RIBA National and International Awards Jury and aids related research groups. His company GROUPWORK are an employee ownership trust studio in which all collaborators are equal partners with engineers, landscape architects and other designers joining on specific projects. These have varied from private houses, residential and office buildings, arts centres, infrastructure bridges and metro stations. The featured projects have been recognized by the RIBA Stirling and EU Mies van Der Rohe jury, and illustrate the practices core philosophy, Explore – Restore – Ignore, allowing a broader sense of context to drive material, structure and compositional narratives.

https://groupwork.uk.com/

Programme Assistant / Mentor

Vid Znidarsic (b. 1991) is an architectural designer, researcher, historian, and educator. He has worked at several world-renowned practices, such as Bevk-Perovic, Casper Mueller Kneer, Farshid Moussavi Architecture, and BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group, where he currently works as an architectural designer and a project lead. Alongside his work in architectural studios, he is constantly developing his creative practice situated at the intersection of critical thinking, creative writing, and design work. In the past, he taught DIP5 at the Architectural Association and currently, he teaches as a Design Fellow in the MArch course at the University of Cambridge. He was a participant in the first AA Visiting School Nanoturism in Vitanje in 2014 and is re-joining as the programme assistant for 2024 edition.

https://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/staff/vid-znidarsic

VISITING EXPERTS

Featured

Tina Gregorič

graduated at Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana and Architectural Association DRL (M.Arch with distinction) in London (2002). At the AA she co-founded +RAMTV. In 2003 she co-founded the architectural practice ‘dekleva gregoric architects’. Since 2014 she is full-professor and Head of the Research Unit for Architectural Typology and Design, Institute of Architecture and Design, Vienna University of Technology, Austria.

www.dekleva-gregoric.com
www.gbl.tuwien.ac.at

Christopher Pierce

is an academic leader and administrator, educator, writer, curator, designer and creative advisor specialising in global networks. He lectures internationally on education, research and practice. Christopher completed his architecture studies at Virginia Tech and gained a PhD in architectural history at the University of Edinburgh. He has more than twenty-five years of higher education teaching, management and leadership experience in both the public and private sector. A member of the Architectural Association’s (AA) Senior Management Team he led the AA’s successful application to the UK Privy Council for Taught Degree Awarding Powers. He is also Head of the AA Visiting School and an Experimental Programme Unit Master.

www.aaschool.ac.uk/academicprogrammes/visitingschool

Maja Vardjan

(b. 1971), is an architect and curator for architecture and design at the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) in Ljubljana. She joined MAO in 2013, where she has been researching Slovenian architectural and design heritage and contemporary creative practices. Since September 2023, she has led the MAO as Acting Director.

She is the author of numerous articles and exhibitions and has participated in numerous lectures and has been the recipient of important professional awards. She also participated in the European platform Made In: Narratives of Craft and Design, which brings together designers, researchers and curators committed to exploring craft heritage through contemporary production.

https://mao.si/

Vasa J. Perović

was born in Belgrade (Serbia) in 1965 and graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Belgrade in 1992. In 1994 he earned a master’s degree from the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, and in 1997 he established Bevk Perović Arhitekti, in partnership with Matija Bevk. Their portfolio includes a variety of projects in different scales – large housing projects, both social and commercial, public and cultural buildings, university buildings, museums, office buildings, congress facilities as well as individual houses.

The office has been awarded numerous international prizes (Mies van der Rohe Award 2007, Kunstpreis Berlin 2006, Piranesi Award 2005, 4 Plečnik Prizes, Golden Pencil award by the Chamber of Architects, Prešeren Prize among others), and the work of the office has been published extensively in some of the most important international publications (El Croquis, 2012)

https://bevkperovic.com/

Rok Žnidaršič

(b. 1977) in Ljubljana, Slovenia graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana in 2004. He started architectural studio MEDPROSTOR (with J. Fischer Knap) in 2010 and won the Rector’s Award for the recognition of important works of art in 2012. Since 2014 he is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana.

He's currently serving as a Deputy Mayor of the City of Ljubljana where, amongst other things, he is striving for an exemplary and comprehensive renovation of the cultural heritage with an emphasis on modernism and the priority projects of Plečnik's heritage: the central market, the Baraga seminary, the Bežigrad stadium and Križanke.

https://www.medprostor.si/

Tomaž Štoka

(b. 1988) is an art historian. Since 2017 he has been working at the Museum of Architecture and Design, where he has been active in the project of preparing Plečnik’s UNESCO World Heritage List nomination in the role of project coordinator and editor of the nomination dossier. After his entry within the Museum, he is responsible for various exhibition projects in the field of architecture and urban design.

He is co-author of ‘Plečnik and Contemporaneity: Glossary’ exhibition and co-curator of ‘Universum Plečnik: Between Workshop and Myth’. Recently he was editor-in-chief of a book ‘Universum Plečnik - Between Workshop and Myth’, expanding on the articulation of Plečnik’s heritage and highlighting the lasting relevance of his designs, thereby opening the doors for further exploration of new sources.

https://mao.si/

SPONSORS

IN COLLABORATION WITH