@Maxim Delvaux - Plecnik Series, Ljubljana, Slovenia
COURSE DESCRIPTION
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 the Slovenian architect 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.
The UNESCO World Heritage Convention recently listed several works of Jože Plečnik in Ljubljana as an example of human-centred urban design. The works elevate the city’s public space, contribute to its distinct architectural identity and, importantly, the ensemble is protected as a whole rather than as isolated architectural fragments, recognising Plečnik’s contribution to Ljubljana as an urban whole.
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, the Vegova street interventions, elevated stairs at St Florian’s Church, and other chosen sites. 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 agenda of the AA Nanotourism Visiting School is to change the perspective on how we visit places and better understand those we live in. To do so, we propose to operate within the constructed term nanotourism, a creative critique of the environmental and social downsides of conventional tourism. Nanotourism is a site-specific, participatory, locally oriented and bottom-up alternative that stretches beyond tourism: it is an attitude dedicated to improving everyday environments and creating better integrated user experiences.
Joze Plecnik
Study for the Urban Development of Ljubljana and Its Surroundings, 1929
METHODOLOGY
Participants will work in small groups, each embedded within a unique site, and will be asked to produce 1:1 spatial interventions re-interpreting one of Plečnik’s works in the course of the 10 day workshop. Through different modes of research-design-make process, such as: drawing, mapping, observation, and on-site construction, we will explore questions such as:
How do Plečnik’s micro-ambients regulate behaviour, movement, and social interaction today?
What forms of use, misuse, or appropriation have emerged since their construction?
How can new 1:1 interventions respond to tourism, temporality, climate, or digital culture without erasing the existing spatial intelligence?
LOCATION
Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana
Slovenia
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 apply via AA Website by submitting the following documents:
CV
Portfolio
A cover letter that includes a response to the following: "Write a short text (300 words max.) or produce a visual piece responding to the importance of reframing tourism today. What should tourism become in an age of climate crisis and overexposure? How might architects intervene differently?"
Upon review, candidates will be contacted with further instructions.
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.
A limited number of scholarships are available, based on merit.
To apply for a scholarship, clearly state that in your cover letter.
MENTORS
VISITING EXPERTS
SYMPOSIUM
The workshop will kick off with a one-day symposium bringing together international and local architects, historians, urban theorists, and practitioners to frame Ljubljana through the lens of micro-ambients, doubles, and contemporary urban life.
Building on the critical discussions developed through previous editions of the AA Nanotourism Visiting School, the symposium will establish a shared theoretical and spatial foundation for the workshop, equipping participants with conceptual tools to critically engage Plečnik’s work as living conditions capable of being mirrored, doubled, and reinterpreted through 1:1 architectural action.
At the same time, it will explore how such highly contextual and small-scale interventions can carry broader implications for how we understand place, exchange, and the circulation of ideas within the contemporary city.
SYMPOSIOUM SPEAKERS
TBC.
@Miran Kambic; Plecnik’s Architecture, Ljubljana, Slovenia
IN COLLABORATION WITH
SPONSORS
Programme Head / Mentor
Aljosa Dekleva is a practising architect and an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana. He received a Master’s Degree in Architecture with Distinction from the 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 of challenging the obvious by building architectures of various scales and programmes worldwide. Since 2014, he has run an experimental teaching and research programme, AA Nanotourism Visiting School at the AA. With Tina Gregoric, he curated the Slovenian national pavilion Home at Arsenale at Venice Biennale 2016. He taught 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 the 2019 Gehry Chair at Daniels in Toronto, Canada.
www.dekleva-gregoric.com