2025 Plečnik Fund GRANT

The Right to the Railway: Conceptual Design for the Revitalization of Railway Buildings in Baška grapa

Author:
Elvis Jerkič

Data:

Category: Plečnik Fund Grant

Author: Elvis Jerkič

Year of realisation: 2024

Mentor: prof. Maruša Zorec, co-mentor: Andraž Keršič

PLEČNIK FUND GRANT

The master thesis The Right to the Railway: Conceptual Design for the Revitalization of Railway Buildings in Baška grapa is a comprehensive study into the construction and development of the railway infrastructure in Slovenia's remote communities. It contains elements of scholarly research as well as strategic and detailed formulation of audacious proposals for the resurrection of its programme and its architectural refurbishment - proposals which are based on the contemporary habitational habits of the residents. The thesis considers the socially sensitive topic of the refurbishment of large-scale industrial heritage in small localities and explores the possibilities for its revitalisation by means of linking the historical layers with the present-day requirements of the local community.

The Right to the Railway - Conceptual Design for the Revitalization of Railway Buildings in Baška grapa - Jury's report

The master thesis The Right to the Railway: Conceptual Design for the Revitalization of Railway Buildings in Baška grapa is a comprehensive study into the construction and development of the space adjacent to the railway in Slovenia's remote communities. It contains elements of scholarly research into the historical layers which had transformed the erstwhile Alpine valley into an industrial landscape, and contrasts them against an experiential analysis of the present-day appearance of the Bača Valley and the lives of its inhabitants. On the basis of the analyses, it proposes strategically considered siting of various minor discrete architectural interventions and puts forward detailed formulation of audacious proposals for the resurrection of the programme and architectural refurbishment of the extant buildings and equipment based on the present-day requirements of the local community. In a different form and function, the habitat is thus restored to the inhabitants who had once been robbed of it by the railway track.

The design of the individual interventions is based upon an in-depth analysis of the relevant set of reference examples from architectural theory, which come to constitute a new whole as they are related to specific spatial conditions of the individual interventions. The analyses and study results are presented in an exceptionally considered, intelligible, and graphically sympathetic way.

The curiosity as well as the passion for research and creativity exhibited in the work have us convinced that the results of the thesis are but the beginning of a fruitful creative process worthy of the support by the Plečnik Grant.

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