Plečnik Projects

Joze Plečnik's infrastructural interventions along the Ljubljanica and Gradasčica rivers in Ljubljana, Slovenia represent a built encyclopedia of design strategies for leveraging the spatial characteristics and functional demands of water to produce a continuously varied and fantastically dynamic urban experience at the interface of the river and the city. Plečnik's designs - visionary at the time - anticipated a performatively resilient and programmatically rich approach to designing the edge of water. Funded by the Architectural League of New York Deborah D. Norden Fund award, I traveled to Ljubljana in to study this two-and-a-half mile sequence of public works. Plečnik Projects: Mapping the Embankments Along the Gradasčica and Ljubljanica is the product of this research and includes a sequence of measured sectional conditions following the two rivers from a rural condition to the city center and back out to the countryside while simultaneously mapping the contextual, topographical, and situational provocations of the adjacent neighborhoods.