We visited Joze Plecnik’s house last week, which has been
turned into a small museum to commemorate the architect’s life. He gained some fame outside of Slovenia for
his work on the Prague castle in the 1920’s, but he is a true icon here in
Slovenia. He spent the 1930’s
redesigning Ljubljana’s city center, including the National and University
Library and just about all of the bridges and other architecture on either side
of the river, as well as the cathedral a few doors down from his house. He is known for using angles and lines to
trick the eye; a great example is a stone staircase near Preseren Square that from
the bottom appears to get much narrower at the top, while from the top appears to
stay the same width all the way down.
His house was quite modest for someone of his stature,
although he did have a few luxuries, like a wood-burning water heater attached
to his bathtub and another in his receiving room to serve hot water to
guests. It also held several of his own
creations…apparently he liked to design wooden chairs that transformed into
desks, so that if he came up with an idea while sitting he could easily get to
work. In his drafting room were chairs
that students had taken from the university during World War II, when they came
to Plecnik’s house for private classes when the university was shut down.
From the kiddos’ perspective, the coolest part was all of
the old-time tools laying around, that there were pretty purple flowers in the gardens outside
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