AA Visiting School Nanotourism

Workshop
Programme

INFO

• Date: Friday, 28th of August 2026 – Tuesday, 8th of September 2026
• Location: Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana
• Deadline for applications: 1^st of May 2026
• Applications: via nanotourism@aaschool.ac.uk with CV and portfolio (more info: https://nanotourism.aaschool.ac.uk/)
• Faculty of Architecture Ljubljana is a partner of the AA Nanotourism programme. As such, a limited number of scholarships (covering the £860 fee) will be awarded to applicants from FA, based on merit.

LJUBLJANA: PLEČNIK, MICRO-AMBIENTS, AND CONTEMPORARY URBAN LIFE

In 2026, the AA Nanotourism Visiting School returns to Ljubljana for a third consecutive year, continuing its investigation into the city through architectural observations, critical tourism, and site-specific action focusing on the work of the Slovenian architect Jože Plečnik. Building on discoveries and collaborations established in previous editions, this year’s programme focuses on Plečnik’s micro-ambients; intimate spatial moments, thresholds, and carefully choreographed situations that inform everyday life in the city.

The UNESCO World Heritage Convention recently listed several works of Jože Plečnik in Ljubljana as an example of human-centred urban design. The works elevate the city’s public space, contribute to its distinct architectural identity and, importantly, the ensemble is protected as a whole rather than as isolated architectural fragments, recognising Plečnik’s contribution to Ljubljana as an urban whole.

While Plečnik’s work is often read through monuments, ensembles, and urban gestures, much of the power of his interventions lies in the smaller scale: the canopy of the Central Market, the banks of the Ljubljanica that bring the river to citizens, and pyramids and obelisks marking axes in the city are just some examples. These spatial devices, conceived for a different social and political context, today operate within a city transformed by tourism, climate pressures, new forms of public use, and shifting ideas of heritage and authorship.

The 2026 workshop will investigate selected sites in Ljubljana where Plečnik’s works already structure everyday urban experience, such as the Mirje Pyramid, the Vegova street interventions, elevated stairs at St Florian’s Church, and other chosen sites. Each location will be approached not as a static heritage object, but as a living spatial condition in flux, activated through the introduction of a 1:1 contemporary architectural response that mirrors, extends, distorts, or critically reinterprets Plečnik’s urban interventions. Conceived as spatial companions, developed through close observation, drawing, and on-site construction, the interventions will aim to reveal how spatial conditions are negotiated, adapted, or contested amid the contemporary urban life.

The agenda of the AA Nanotourism Visiting School is to change the perspective on how we visit places and better understand those we live in. To do so, we propose to operate within the constructed term nanotourism, a creative critique of the environmental and social downsides of conventional tourism. Nanotourism is a site-specific, participatory, locally oriented, and bottom-up alternative that stretches beyond tourism: it is an attitude dedicated to improving everyday environments and creating better integrated user experiences.

METHODOLOGY

Participants will work in small groups, each embedded within a unique site, and will be asked to produce 1:1 spatial interventions re-interpreting one of Plečnik’s works in the course of the 10-day workshop. Through different modes of research-design-make process, such as: drawing, mapping, observation, and on-site construction, we will explore questions such as:

How do Plečnik’s micro-ambients regulate behaviour, movement, and social interaction today?

What forms of use, misuse, or appropriation have emerged since their construction?

How can new 1:1 interventions respond to tourism, temporality, climate, or digital culture without erasing the existing spatial intelligence?

SYMPOSIUM

The workshop will kick off with a one-day symposium bringing together international and local architects, historians, urban theorists, and practitioners to frame Ljubljana through the lens of micro-ambients, doubles, and contemporary urban life.

Building on the critical discussions developed through previous editions of the AA Nanotourism Visiting School, the symposium will establish a shared theoretical and spatial foundation for the workshop, equipping participants with conceptual tools to critically engage Plečnik’s work as living conditions capable of being mirrored, doubled, and reinterpreted through 1:1 architectural action.

At the same time, it will explore how such highly contextual and small-scale interventions can carry broader implications for how we understand place, exchange, and the circulation of ideas within the contemporary city.

MENTORS

Programme Heads:

Aljosa Dekleva is a practising architect and an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana. He received a Master’s Degree in Architecture with Distinction from the Architectural Association in London in 2002. He co-directs the architectural practice Dekleva Gregoric Architects, pursuing the concept of research by design and design by research, with the aim of challenging the obvious by building architectures of various scales and programmes worldwide. Since 2014, he has run an experimental teaching and research programme, AA Nanotourism Visiting School at the AA. With Tina Gregoric, he curated the Slovenian national pavilion Home at Arsenale at Venice Biennale 2016. He taught architecture as a guest professor at Université de Montréal in Canada, ENSA Paris Val de Seine in France, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, and as the 2019 Gehry Chair at Daniels in Toronto, Canada.

Vid Znidarsic is an architect, researcher, and educator. He has worked at several world-renowned practices, such as Bevk-Perovic, Casper Mueller Kneer, Farshid Moussavi Architecture, and BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, where he most recently worked as a Senior Architect. Currently, he is undertaking his PhD in Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett, UCL, focusing on the Non-Aligned Movement and the histories of former Yugoslavia. He teaches as a Design Fellow in the MArch course at the University of Cambridge and is a Studio Master in the First Year at the AA. Vid is one of the curators of the exhibition House of Creatures at the 2026 Milano Design Week. He was a participant in the first AA Visiting School Nanoturism in Vitanje in 2014 and has re-joined the programme as a Programme Head from 2024 onwards.

Guest Mentor:

Bryce Suite is a London-based architect, designer, and educator, and a Senior Associate at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, where he focuses on international public and cultural projects. His recent work with DS+R includes the exhibitions Restless Architecture at MAXXI in Rome, Cartier and Islamic Art at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and Paris Moderne at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai; V&A East Storehouse in London; the unrealized Centre for Music at the Barbican; and Canal Cafe, which was awarded the Golden Lion at the 2025 Venice Biennale. Bryce holds a Master of Architecture from Columbia University GSAPP. He has taught design studios at Columbia and, most recently, a Diploma Unit at the Architectural Association, focusing on expanded approaches to adaptive reuse and civic space. Bryce is originally from Lexington, Kentucky, and is a licensed architect in New York.

ORGANISATION:

Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, UK

In collaboration with:

Fakulteta za arhitekturo, UL

Museum of Architecture and Design, MAO, Ljubljana

TU Wien, Vienna