Architecture is not a static but a dynamic, living thing. Similarly, film is highly suited to represent and experience architectures as spaces, as stages for human encounter and interaction. In the Small and Smart films architecture becomes animated, even transformed, with social input. In the same way, it serves to animate its viewers/occupants – architecture as stage and actor both.

Small and Smart consists of six short films, one of each of six built architectural projects from around Slovenia. Each employs a simple story – a development, an exchange – to move through and relate the experience of the architecture. As the films move through and document the spaces and exchanges, certain key features of the architectures are revealed; and a wider, general impression of the spaces is communicated.

Good built projects in Slovenia today generally follow a well-thought and focused approach and execution. They are, relatively speaking, of modest size. They are small not in scale nor in ambition, but small as in contained, disciplined, and specifically responsive; with room for a smile. All architectures here are recent builds (2007–2011) and are of varied types, programs and scales: private house, row house, industrial, institutional, public and sacred. Together they reflect representative currents, developments and practices in the best of Slovenian architecture today.

Jeff Bickert, Curator, Co-Producer

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Opening up the great yet graceful doors of Marusa Zorec’s unique open-air altar (Brezje, 2008) opens the church onto the square, to the people, and the town around.

Much of the success of this solution hinges on a smart reversed order of things: services are conducted from inside outward onto the square and most importantly, the square becomes the church. The magic of the altar lies in the dualistic: it’s discreet when closed, part of the landscape and the surrounding square; once open, it is tastefully dominating, elegantly bold. As a (very) contemporary architecture we might also see it as a pop-up church – simply open, preach and prey.

Inside and out the materials employed are exclusively wood – unlike the cold of stone they are soft, warm, welcoming. Stone is used in abundance, however, throughout the expansive square – the sensitive work of Jože Plečnik and Janez Valentinčič from the mid-1930s.

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Credits re: Small and Smart: Expressions of Contemporary Slovenian Architecture in Film

SQUARE AND OPEN-AIR ALTAR, BREZJE
MARUŠA ZOREC, MARTINA TEPINA
BREZJE, 2008

curator, co-producer  JEFF BICKERT (ARK)  
director and writer MATJAŽ IVANIŠIN
cinematographer MARKO BRDAR    
editor JURIJ MOŠKON
production manager MATIJA KOZAMERNIK  
producer DANIJEL HOČEVAR
financial support MINISTRY OF CULTURE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA
production VERTIGO EMOTIONFILM  
for  MAO, MUSEUM OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN, 2011; Matevž Čelik

www.mao.si
Small and smart brochure