Home by Dekleva Gregorič Architects, 2016

Just a taste of the book home by dekleva gregorič architects brings my thoughts in the parallel universe of the infinite Babylonian library. A short story where Jorge Luis Borges creates the structure of the universe in an amazing shape of a library, which contains all existing books, translated in all possible languages. The library consists of infinite hexagonal rooms, containing four walls of bookshelves with all useful information for human survival including predictions of the future. A writer became in this way an architect. Is it possible another way round, that the architect becomes a writer?

Dekleva Gregorič architects library is a space of exploring the notions of home and dwelling: “Is home where the library is, or is the library where home is?” 

The book, published with the participation of Slovenia at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition at the Biennale in Venice, is a presentation of dekleva gregorič architects work over the last decade. They create a platform to explore concepts of home and stay in the presentation of residential structures. The book is structured in three parts; presentation of complete projects, exploring projects in progress and questioning the both with the installation at the Venice Biennale. The projects are accompanied with an introduction by Dominique Boudet and essays by Thibaut de Ruyter, Hrvoje Njirić, Miloš Kosec, Jure Grohar and Mateja Medvedič.

Architectural experiments, as they called their own houses, are answering to the specific conditions of context, processes of time, materiality of the location and users needs. Each project is a book in the architect’s library of home and contains approaches and structures for comparation of the working processes.

Addressed as “Home Makers” by WALLPAPER award for the best break through designers in 2006 are dealing with the question where is home based, what is home today and how can home be presented in a public library? With a specific architectural language of modernism they define their architecture from a detail to the final structure. They don’t use prefabricated details but create their own and in this way discover contemporary architectural materiality.

With the project [Home at Arsenale] for Biennale di Venezia architects create a model of one of the spaces of Babylonian library where each house stands like a book on the shelf of architectural knowledge.

home by dekleva gregorič architects. Aljoša Dekleva and Tina Gregorič (editors) and Vid Zabel (assistant editor), Matevž Čelik (foreword), Ajda Schmidt (design and layout). 305 pages, text in English, Ljubljana 2016. Published by Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)