Re-Brief Plecniks Proposal for a Parliament
NOTION OF ABSENCE
& PRESENCE
There is a constant notion of Plecnik's Parliament as the lost / lust object or as the object of desire. The reason is that the parliament is actually always present, even though it was never realized. The idea of the Slovenian parliament building is being carried forward as the idea of Slovenian independency itself - and the absent parliament becomes stronger generator of this independency desire than any other Plecnik's building in Ljubljana (and Ljubljana is literary designed & built by Plecnik).
This absence & presence (in its physical and metaphorical form) will become the driving force of the re-brief of the project.
There is no architecture without program. Event is the only generator for the iconicity of the building itself.
The pulse of the parliament as icon will reach its highest peak only in the moment when program takes the full control over the space.
RE-BRIEF
1. Losing the icon
Due to political situation the parliament is being only partly built. The powerful socialist regime is not convinced with the 150 meters monumental cone and proposes a compromise instead: the outer layer of the building (fake colonnade, which Plecnik is proposing) is being realized, but now surrounding a modest modernist building - representing the new Slovenian parliament.
2. Abandonment
After the realization of the building it first houses the delegates of the socialist party, but the political situation shifts and the parliament is being left - by the representatives of the power but also abandoned as an architecture. The building experiences a transition from a modern building, housing the new political ideologies, to a decayed empty space - giving rather a sense of nostalgia (of something being lost / something never being there) then of positive futurism.
3. Finding the icon / Programmatic Orgy
This happens in the moment where the program takes over the building. And that is the only true iconic moment in its life. The abandoned parliament attracts other abandoned individuals - and so it becomes a place of different thinking, place of alternative actions, meetings, art and creative discourse. Within the boundaries of Plecnik's colonnade, this little artificial world can flourish without limits. The orgy of program, now constantly developing within the space, is now sheltered by the i-cone.
4. Acceptance
It does not last long, until this world is being noticed outside its protective barriers and until it starts attracting the wider public of the city, in which the world has been existing so far. The secret is revealed; The consequences are a new transition in the life of the building. The decayed space (which first attracted individuals, then groups and finally the collective) is slowly transforming into a new kind of space. Competing with the contemporary ideas of exhibition spaces, the building develops into a neutral, clinique image of what is expected. We feel the second notion of nostalgia: of something what we lost / but due to its temporary nature, we actually never had.
5. Killing the icon
The icon is dead - long live the icon.
By killing the true iconicity and by being widely accepted in the public, the parliament is no longer perceived as a highly respected monument but rather as a collective (iconic) space, attracting the masses. To enable this development (and to let the program bleed out of the building into the urban fabric) formal decisions are being made: the individual layers through the depth of the plan are being shifted, opened and transformed according to the program. The new icon is not a two dimensional image, it is a deep space, defying gravity of its surrounding.
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