17 febbraio 2025  |  Piranesi  |  Robert Potokar

Books | A concise overview of Slovenian architecture in the period 1968-1991

In last year’s issue of Piranesi, in the architectural theory segment, we already presented an article in which architectural historian Raimondo Mercadante described Slovenian architecture of the last third of the 20th century in a concise and succinct manner. He has expanded his doctoral dissertation from 2022 into a book, published by Aracne, with over 500 pages, both in digital and print editions, in which he presents in more detail his view of what was happening on the Slovenian architectural scene at the time. Let us stress from the outset that we have never had the opportunity to read such a detailed architectural overview of this period in Slovenia before. It is almost unbelievable how a foreign expert managed to sift through a mountain of documents, information, and interviews, as well as learning the Slovene language for the purpose, and then compile it all to produce an interesting read in which we learn a lot of new things that even we, Slovenian architects, did not know ourselves. It is true that we look at these developments differently, but now a foreign architectural historian has held up a mirror in which we can see that Slovenian architecture of that period was innovative, drawing on new, Western, ideas brought by postmodernism. However, in Slovenia this still took on a different connotation than, say, in the USA, where the projects of Charles Moore or Michael Graves are typically eclectic: full of repetitions of elements carried over from the Classical period.
From my personal perspective, reading this interesting book brought me back to the time in question, as I followed it “live”, so to speak, especially in its last decade, as a student of architecture and later while working for one of its main protagonists, Vojteh Ravnikar. I have thus had the opportunity to understand indirectly, from his perspective, what Slovenian architects were going through in the 1970s. It therefore seems all the remarkable that an Italian researcher born in 1981 in Palermo, who did not experience this period himself, is exploring and uncovering layers of the social and architectural developments of the time from the outside, almost with an attention of a detective.
He is helped by the studies of Marko Pozzetto, to whom he dedicates this book, the architectural historian Àkos Moravánszky, a great expert on Central European architecture, who wrote the foreword, and above all the architect Aleš Vodopivec, who is his main interlocutor, and probably also his informant. In Slovenia, at the time of the preparation of the doctoral thesis on which this book is based, there were even more diverse interlocutors, from the architects gathered around the Architect’s Bulletin (ab), Jurij Kobe, Andrej Hrausky, Peter Gabrijelčič and others. On the basis of the oral information Mercadante received, he examined the available archival material and visited the buildings in question, observing them and documenting the actual situation with photographs.
At the beginning, the author notes that the relevant literature is relatively scarce, only partial, mainly composed of surveys of the whole of Yugoslav architecture at the time, or catalogues of groups or individual authors. One of the main sources he cites are the architectural magazines of the time, Arhitekt, Sinteza, Architect’s Bulletin (ab), List and, from the early 1990s on, Piranesi. The Slovenian newspapers, which regularly reported on architecture and published architectural reviews, included Delo, Dnevnik, Večer and Mladina.
The book is divided into an introductory section, in which Mercadante explains his approach to research and provides some background and general descriptions of Slovenia, and eight chapters, which provide a more detailed elaboration of the subject matter. From postmodernism, the influence of Professor Edvard Ravnikar on the School of Architecture and Slovenian architecture as a whole, new influences and theoretical approaches, the Kras Group and the link to the Piran Days of Architecture, competitions and urban planning, to Maribor’s urban and architectural story and the new reality of the early 1990s when Slovenia became independent.
The book gives us a lot of interesting and detailed reading, and it is difficult to highlight just one part of it, it has to be picked up and read as a whole. But let us mention, for example, the interesting facts about the phenomenon of Room 25 at the Faculty of Architecture, which has been mentioned many times in various texts, but perhaps never actually explained in this way. The author explains the reasons for its creation, its place in the wider context and its impact on the generations of students and young architects at the time.
He places each of his theses in a detailed time frame, in space, in the Yugoslavia of the time, explaining the politics of self-management, the break-up of Yugoslavia and the independence of the individual republics. All of this is carefully presented, supported by detailed sources and footnotes, more than 1,300 in all, so that even a reader unfamiliar with the political developments of the time can understand that the various forces at play were indirectly reflected in architecture. For those of us who experienced the period in person, albeit as teenagers and young people, this detailed contextualisation in the broader political context is almost unnecessary, and for many readers may even be burdensome. There are simply too many events, politicians and movements described that, despite everything, are not as connected to the built architectural projects as one might think. For example, the description of the theatre performance The Baptism under Triglav by the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre is of course interesting, especially if one saw the performance, but for many readers it could be just one more piece of information.
Although Jože Plečnik had been deceased for quite some time by the period under discussion, his influence on it was significant, although at first often ignored. Mercadante describes the gradually growing interest and presentation of Plečnik’s work abroad, which culminated in the 1986 exhibition dedicated to him at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and effectively put him on the world architectural map. In fact, at a really opportune time, the era of postmodernism, Plečnik’s work was read as an epochal model.
The sixth chapter is devoted to describing the competition projects with extreme precision, going into specific, probably not so important details, down to how many dinars the first or second prize was worth. On the other hand, the size of the prize can be understood in terms of its context in the general economic situation in Yugoslavia at the time. In any case, it all reads like an interesting summary of competitions that have already disappeared from our architectural consciousness: the project by Professor Edvard Ravnikar for a fountain in Prešeren Square, which was the subject of a real revolt, with many unsavoury comments made about the proposed solution. Some of the old projects have been overtaken by new competitions, such as the one for the Museum of the Revolution between Barjanska and Riharjeva Streets, with a new competition for the Science Centre. There is also the competition for the National University Library NUK 2 in 1989, which was won by the solution of Marko Mušič, and which has still not been realised to this very day, despite a new competition and a new solution in 2011.
In his comprehensive analysis of a period of more than 20 years, Mercadante presents an impressive number of Slovenian architects, more than 120, including all the main protagonists who were organised around the Architect’s Bulletin (ab): Aleš Vodopivec, Jurij Kobe, Vojteh Ravnikar, Peter Gabrijelčič, and the team united in Biro 71, as well as individual architects such as Marko Mušič, Viktor Pust, Miloš Bonča, Milan Pogačnik, Tomaž Medvešček, Igor Skulj and others. Or, for example, the role of the architect Borut Pečenko and his influence on the image of contemporary Maribor, including the importance of the renovation plan for Lent. Maribor, our second largest city, is often overlooked in reviews of Slovenian architecture. Of course, an additional few lines, commentary or photograph could be devoted to many an architect, but the fact is that it is simply not possible to cover everything in a single volume. The last chapter is devoted to a description of the events of the early 1990s, the Slovenian break with Yugoslavia, independence and its impact on the new paradigms of Slovenian architecture, and ends with a description of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a landmark work of the late 1990s.
In the conclusion, Mercadante sums up the essence of his writing, concluding with the observation, and at the same time a call, that the quality architectural works of the period should be valued and protected and preserved as much as possible, rather than leaving some of them to the fate of being altered, if not demolished. To sum up, we can only hope that the work will eventually be translated into Slovenian, so that it will be more accessible to the Slovenian professional and lay public, even if only to a small part of it – those who still, despite digitisation, want to read professional literature in printed form and learn more about our architectural (and not so distant) past.