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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The first thing we notice on approaching architect Jože Petrkoč’s striking three white volumes on Ljubljana’s Jurčkova street (2009) is the compelling profile they carve out of the surrounding space and sky. They are one, yet three distinct forms: separate in program but joined thematically and physically by adjacent garages and a walk-around mid-level terrace/roof.

Their compact exterior and odd shape – as opposed to a solid block – reduces their bulk or weight; they’re not massive but light and airy. And while unarguably contemporary, they also make subtle reference to local vernaculars. The house works longitudinally, tracing a comparatively narrow width working front to back. Three floor-volumes are smartly stacked on top of each other, connected by a tectonically sculpturesque staircase cast in unfinished concrete.

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

HOUSES ON JURČKOVA STREET
JOŽE PETERKOČ
LJUBLJANA, 2009

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