UNVEILING THE HIDDEN
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In our search to exhibit architects whose sensitivity and skill we had discovered over the years, the insightful, strong and delicate work of Maruša Zorec struck a chord with us. She has an ability to make a huge impact on space. Using her informed intelligence with new insertions into exsisting spaces she crosses the void between thinking and making. Highly-crafted, simple elements transform and enliven neglected and abandoned buildinsd, existnig building complexest are transformed.
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For this Biennale Architettura, with the title Unveil the hidden, referring to the work of what she calls The Ancestors, Zorec both remind us of, and introduces us to Jože Plečnik, Svetozar Križaj, Edvard Ravnikar, Vojteh Ravnikar and Oton Jugovec. She brings us 'gifts', including the wonderful, enigmatic isolated wooden construction of a roof protecting the ruins of a medieval church and the modern structure by Oton Jugovec, which is an interpretation of a traditional hayrack.
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Quoting the Slovenian philosopher Dušan Pirjevec Ahac, 'instead of saying that architecture designes the space, it is better to say that architectural work opens the space…', Zorec includes the advice that 'there are places that we return to again and again because by inhabiting them we rediscover something essential about ourselves'.
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Yvonne Farrell, Shelly McNamara
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Architecture is not just building a shelter, constructing the roof or creating the borders of a space. It can evoke empathy for the space and create ambients that touch all the senses of its inhabitants. It can help people to open up, to stop and listen, to see and be impressed. Space affects the user, it gives meaning to her life, offers her a possibility to identify and to love the place. Thus, a place becomes a home.
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Architecture can discover the past, interpret traditions, build places for societies and places where you feel free. We believe that the open floor plan, introduced at the begining of the 20th century, manifests this freedom. We use it to shape our concepts through which we open the hidden and undiscovered places and try to bring light and life into them.
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Our projects deal with square and a tree, with wall and an opening, with an entrance and a path. The path is the guide through the place, light establishes shadows and creates the atmosphere, it helps us feel the time and movement of the sun, it helps us see all the layers of the past. Space is differentiated in the scale, height and materiality, it offers benches to seat, views to focus on, places to rethink. We believe that the open space is connected to the freedom of the mind.
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Ourexhibit at Arsenale is a place of intimacy. We would like the visitors to stop, enjoy the silence and the darkness, experience the freespace and be inspired by the existing elements of the Corderie - columns, wall and the window. We understand FREESPACE as an offer of architecture to the user. The path guides you through the labyrinth of walls to the light. The walls present our concepts and our backgrounds, inspirations and processes with people engaged in them, they present the materiality of our works and the untouchable – the FREESPACE.
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Maruša Zorec
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project:
2017 - 2018
address:
Arsenale, Venice, Italy
project team:
Maruša Zorec, Klara Bohinc, Tadej Bolta
Silvia Susanna
Mark Koritnik, Matjaž Bolčina
Danijel Tejić, Rok Willenpart, Grega Drobnič
construction team:
RPS d.o.o., Lesnina O.K. d.o.o.
photo:
Tadej Bolta
