Slovenian industrial designer Nika Zupanc cooperated with Trimo for this year's Superstudio Piu's exhibition in Milano, Italy. Her »objects gone indescrete« are featured in a striking architectural installation named The Doll house which at the same time serves as the world launch of Trimo's new innovative modular facade element: Qbiss by Trimo. 

With her exhibition I Will Buy the Flowers Myself, Nika tackles the established attributes of a socially stigmatized woman with her characteristic sincerity, which is here especially inspired by the stories of some of the most famous female literary heroines. Her display space thus opens up through a sequence of spicy comments cast in shamelessly beautiful forms.

Here's the interview on-location, featuring Nika's exciting and sophisticated creations.

If in Milano, you can visit the exhibition until April 27th. If not, feel free to browse Nika's website. Oh, just don't buy her flowers, ok? ;)

Yesterday the Pleènik architectural awards were presented to the best examples of Slovenian architecture in the past year. As Miha Dešman, the president of the awards committee put it: »Slovenia cannot compete with the rest of the world with its size and quantity, but with quality and defying the known and usual. For that, we need self-esteem, creativity and a clear value system.« Yes!

The winners of the Pleènik award, named after the famous Slovenian architect Jože Pleènik (for our Czech colleagues, he most likely needs no introduction), were Maruša Zorec and Martina Tepina who were awarded for their open-air altar in Brezje. The Pleènik medals were awarded to Bevk Peroviæ architects for three of their residential houses, Aleš Prinèiè for his hotel in Udine, Italy and Jure Kotnik for his book on container architecture. The Student Pleènik award was given to Martina Malešiè, student of Faculty of Arts for her diploma work »Architects France and Marta Ivanšek« on the two architects most recognized for their work in the field of urban residental areas for the elderly and interior design.

Brezje altar; more photos available on Miran Kambiè's site

House D - I can see my house from there! No, really!; more photos available on Bevk Peroviæ website

Hotel in Udine, Italy; photo source: RTVSlo 

Jure Kotnik: Container Architecture; more info here. 


Marta and France Ivanšek; photo source: Trajekt.org

As we see, the awarded works are minimal, even modest in design and as the jury put it, »ignoring the world trends«. I was particularly pleased to hear Jure was awarded since his book features some awesome examples and is written so clearly that it can be understood by a layman. His diploma work on container architecture was awarded in 2006 with both Prešern's award for best student works and Trimo Research Award. Oh, and as if we needed another proof of how small the world is, Jure's diploma mentor was Janez Koželj and Maruša helped us with introducing this year's Trimo Urban Crash to the students in Ljubljana. Go figure :)

Congratulations to all the winners. Stay creative and keep the the modern Slovenian architecture in the world's top!

At long last, after what seems to be an epoche of biting nails and knitting fan scarves (well not me... but if anyone did, do send me one) we finally have the results. But that's not really news. I bet you're much more interested in the winners. So, without further ado, ta-daaa:

Alicja and Jan with a model of their winning proposal

See, blonde people are good at designing too ;) Seriously now, congratulations to both of you guys and thanks again for the photo. Hope you are able to sleep now that the big rush is all over.  

Otherwise, it was very nice to put the cherry on top of the final results with contacting the best authors and hearing/reading all the »woo-hoos«, »omg«-s and »really«-s. Now that the application forms are open, we can also see how students from different countries managed. We were especially taken aback by Czech Republic and Slovenia with five shortlisted projects each from the total of 14 (Czech Republic) and 20 (Slovenia) submitted. Nice work. Another interesting thing was a little less surprising – the student, registered in Japan was actually Bojan, who studies in Tokyo. As we say, go anywhere in the world and you're bound to bump into a Serbian :) Other countries did well too, as the nominations also went to Italy, United Kingdom, Croatia, Serbia and of course Poland.

So, now begins the last part of the competition with the most interesting part of course being the construction of the »white dancer« and its grand opening. We're also in talks about the summer workshop, but cannot yet announce what the main theme is going to be. But worry not, everything will be revealed in time. Oooh, mysterious. I like it :)