architects Vasa Perović, Matija Bevk
project Two Residental Buildings, Ljubljana, Slovenia
written by Tomaž Brate

 

Every now and then I remember the tune of the “Blue Danube”, to which in Kubrick’s movie the space ship 2001 slowly rolls its way to the moon. The paradoxical combination of the romanticism of the past world and the coldly absent object – a distinctive detail – stands in a timeless, soothing antagonism.

 

The two residential buildings by architects Bevk and Perović are a similarly inspired combination of bygone worlds and cold absence. Actually, it is architecture that begins and ends in relatively elemental parameters: on one side pleasure, the nostalgic luxury of good solid buildings, on the other side a message about the technological present, a typified example (element) of beauty. And in between, naturally, there is a whole space of cognition and knowledge, which elevates the imposed elementary architectural narrative from the average combination of boredom and beauty.