Alpine Contrapposto - Vrlovčnik

You are cordially invited to the presentation of the renovation of the Vrlovčnik complex in Matkov kot and to the presentation of the book Alpine Contrapposto, recipient of the 59th Zagreb Salon Award for Oris, which will take place on Wednesday, 16 April 2025, at 6 p.m. in DESSA gallery.

Round table guests
Petra Čeferin, Damir Fabijanić, Ana Gajski, Vera Grimmer, Otmar Kugovnik, Maroje Mrduljaš, Sven Sorić and Rok Žnidaršič

Moderator
Andraž Keršič

The latest publishing project by Oris and Oris House of Architecture is the book Alpine Contrapposto - about the renovation project of the rural estate in the Kamnik-Savinj Alps, by Slovenian architectural studio Medprostor. The book contains texts by Slovenian and Croatian architects - Petra Čeferin, Miloš Kosec, Maroje Mrduljaš and Finnish architect and former professor of architecture Juhani Pallasmaa, along with the extensive interview with the Medprostor office, a technical elaboration of the project and a photo essay by Damir Fabijanić.

"The renovation of the Vrlovčnik Homestead by Medprostor, located in the isolation of the mountains, valleys and forests of Slovenia, is an architectural collage of materials, time and meanings through a radical surgical operation on the traditional farm structures. It exemplifies architecture that arises from the juxtaposition of old and new, conventional and radical, nameless and specific, enigmatic and clear, intellectual and emotional, useful and useless. The aesthetics of conflict and contrast resurrect the abandoned farm buildings doomed to anonymity, decay and oblivion. This patient and refined architectural surgery gives the three ordinary farm structures an entirely new life and narrative content through vital dialogical transformations. The project exemplifies the fundamental mediating capacity of architecture, as opposed to the commonly totalizing and autistic approach of forcefully aestheticized contemporary architectural imagery."

– Juhani Pallasmaa, from the book Alpine Contrapposto

The book won an Award at the 59th Zagreb Salon of Architecture and Urbanism, with the selector's argumentation: 

It’s a writing that deals with the refined balancing of traditional village architecture by means of, as the authors say, surgical architectural operation on a risky patient – a traditional homestead in the countryside. Every step of the intervention is weighted, traditional and radical methods are combined, separating the useful from the useless, as well as balancing the relationship between the intellectual and the emotional. The duration of the operation is not an element that should be taken into consideration, the path to the fascinating result lasted exactly as long as it was necessary, just enough to write the book.

Alpski kontrapost / Alpine Contrapposto

Publishers: Oris, d. o. o. & Oris House of Architecture

Authors: Petra Čeferin, Tadej Glažar, Vera Grimmer, Maja Haderlap, Miloš Kosec, Maroje Mrduljaš, Juhani Pallasmaa, Maruša Zorec

Editor of Photography: Damir Fabijanić

Authors of the Vrlovčnik architectural project: Rok Žnidaršič, Jerneja Fischer Knap, Žiga Ravnikar

Editor-In-Chief: Andrija Rusan

Executive Editors: Ana Gajski, Vera Grimmer, Ana Bedenko

Editorial Board: Vera Grimmer, Maroje Mrduljaš, Andrija Rusan, Tadej Glažar

Design and Layout: Sven Sorić

Language: Slovenian / English

Number of Pages: 352

Number of Photographs: 162

Number of Illustrations: 26

Number of Plans: 68

Book size: 28 cm x 18 cm

Sponsors of the presentation at the DESSA Gallery

Ministry of Culture, Municipality of Ljubljana

The book will be for sale at the DESSA Gallery.

For more illustrations please visit this link.