Marjan Šorli and Domesticated Architecture – guided tour of the MAO exhibition
The exhibition Marjan Šorli and Domesticated Architecture is the first in MAO’s new Preview series, which presents the museum’s collection to the public through an innovative and open approach. In September 2025, we marked the 110th anniversary of the birth and the 50th anniversary of the death of architect Marjan Šorli (1915–1975) – designer, writer, thinker, lecturer, and remarkable creator who has often been overlooked in architectural history. Rather than a traditional, closed curatorial presentation, the exhibition explores Šorli’s work as an open commentary on the diverse materials recently acquired by the museum.
Marjan Šorli was highly original, yet a distinctive representative of postwar Slovenian architecture. His houses reveal a wide range of influences—from Plečnik’s school, studies of anonymous vernacular architecture, and insights gained from travels across Europe and the USA, to Anglo-Saxon theories on the psychology of spatial perception. His work is characterized by a unique material language and expression that navigates between archetypal principles and tested methods, while experimenting boldly with traditional and contemporary materials, balancing subtle relationships with the natural and cultural context and decisive interventions in space.
Throughout his oeuvre, Šorli designed architecture tailored to human scale. Drawing on erudite knowledge of architectural development, he crafted spaces of harmonious proportions and small scale using traditional materials and elements, while considering the technological and spatial possibilities of his time. His reflections on space remain highly relevant today, emphasizing principles such as the coexistence of nature and architecture, the use of simple low-tech solutions for lighting, ventilation, heating, and cooling (with intermediate zones), and the pursuit of proper building proportions in relation to the human scale.
