Ryan Barriball - 00_If Columns Could Talk

AA Visiting School 2024, Jože Plečnik and Ljubljana

Piranesi Honorable Mention Award Nomination

If Columns Could Talk

Inviting individuals to find their own Ljubljana

with Eva Bratina, Gil Grassmann, Sebastian Pichler

Born out of the transitional period between the two World Wars, Plečnik’s Ljubljana is not your typical city but a mysterious invitation for individuals to discover their own versions of it, just as he did himself. Plečnik casually misused the rules of classical architecture, creating works that are both familiar and grounded, yet simultaneously open and ambiguous.

We recognise Plečnik’s freestanding columns as companions throughout Ljubljana as part-structure, part-utility and part-human. As the city evolves, they remain in the spirit of finding resilience in uncertainty of their meaning, function and purpose.

The project proposes and inserts three contemporary columns into three varied sites around Ljubljana. They extend, mirror, and bring awareness to his unusual system. Balancing a generic language of architecture with site specificity, the new columns are shaped with off-the-shelf material, seemingly incomplete, to increase their open-ended character. They ask people to look again at the Ljubljana they know and themselves as active users in Plečnik’s game.