Round Table at DESSA Gallery: What Comes After Modernism?
On Wednesday, 7 October, at 6 pm, we invite you to DESSA Gallery for the closing round table of the thematic programme OHS Spaces for Reflection: What Comes After Modernism?, dedicated to Ljubljana architecture from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Over the past few weeks, visitors have explored selected architectural works from this period through a series of guided tours, experiencing them directly on site together with some of their authors. Spanning different scales and typologies – from interiors and architectural details to sacred architecture, public space, housing developments and entire urban districts – the programme has offered an insight into a period in which architects were rethinking their relationship to history and tradition, the city, the existing context, and the architectural discipline itself.
To conclude the programme, we will bring together the projects and themes explored during the guided tours and place them within a broader reflection on the architecture that followed modernism. Together with some of the authors of the featured projects, we will revisit the ideas and principles that shaped this period, asking which of them remain relevant today and what these projects can tell us about contemporary architectural practice and the city.
The discussion will be moderated by architect Blaž Šenica, guest curator of this year’s thematic programme. Before the round table, we will screen a short film produced during the architectural tours, followed by an informal gathering after the discussion.
From Interior to Urban District
The series of architectural tours brings together Boris Kraigher Square, today known as Ajdovščina, Platana Bar and Bistro and DESSA Gallery, the Church of Christ’s Incarnation in Dravlje, the Zupančičeva jama mixed-use district, and the Novi Tabor housing estate, where the final architectural tour will take place on 6 October (registration at [email protected]).
Spanning different scales and typologies, the selection of projects offers an insight into the diverse architectural approaches of the period. Zupančičeva jama and Novi Tabor draw attention to a renewed search for urbanity, the urban block, and the relationship between buildings, streets, and public and semi-public spaces. Boris Kraigher Square reveals an ambitious vision for a new multifunctional urban centre and the relationship between the original architectural concept and its later realisation.
Questions concerning the relationship to history, context, and the architectural discipline also emerge in Platana Bar and Bistro, where Boris Podrecca interpreted Ljubljana through its position between Central European and Mediterranean cultural spheres, and in DESSA Gallery, an important space within Slovenian architectural culture. The Church of Christ’s Incarnation in Dravlje extends the selection into the field of sacred architecture.
The closing round table will bring together the individual projects and themes explored throughout the tours, placing them within a broader reflection on the period and on the relevance of its ideas and principles for architecture and the city today.
