You are cordially invited to the opening of the exhibition Attention – still fragile! Slovene Alpine Architecture 2019–2026, which will take place on Monday, June 22, 2026, at 7:00 p.m. at the DESSA Gallery.

Attention – still fragile! Slovene Alpine Architecture 2019–2026

Gallery DESSA presents the second exhibition from the series Slovene Alpine Architecture, which showcases Slovene architectural production in the Slovene Alpine space. The first exhibition, 2008–2018, was noted both in Slovenia and abroad: by January 2022, it had seen fourteen further runs, seven of these elsewhere in Slovenia and seven abroad, mostly in the Alpine regions of Italy.

This time, the exhibition and accompanying events were prepared in collaboration and co-production by Gallery DESSA and Institute Afront. The discovery of the contemporary Alpine production is augmented with the wisdom of the past and expanded beyond the gallery space, to the respective architectures’ sites.

As with the previous exhibition, we tied the selection of the projects to the territory of the Alpine Convention, which in Slovenia includes the Julian Alps, the Karawanks, the Kamnik-Savinja Alps, Pohorje, and the pre-Alpine hills of Polhov Gradec Dolomites and the Trnovo Forest and Nanos Plateaux.

The selected projects feature different typologies and programmes: open space, sport facilities, bivouacs and tourism facilities, public buildings, and residential and holiday houses. This time, the presentation is ordered by the year of their respective realisations. The selection criteria emphasise the context, utility, sustainability, and identity: the understanding of and respect towards the natural and cultural landscape, outlines whose size and shape are to be carefully embedded into the mountain-ambient scenery, proportions of the volumes and sides, contemporary open and “fluid” spatial designs, the choice of sustainable materials, the contemporary interpretation of traditional built heritage, and the preservation of local tradition, know-how, and learning of the previous generations.

We hope for this exhibition of superior architectures to contribute to the consolidation of the foundations, the preservation of our values, and a quality development of the Alpine space. The quote by the invited selector Armando Ruinelli contains a warning: “An approach favouring the visual at the expense of a deeper consideration on the meanings can cause an inevitable impoverishment of architectural culture. … Pursuant to these considerations, the exhibition in Gallery DESSA in Ljubljana is certainly encouraging for the future of contemporary architecture in the Slovene Alps, which already enjoys stellar reputation.”