Memorial on Saint Urlich Hill
Exhibition and memorial dedicated to Partisans and rebels, who were tortured and executed by Nazi collaborators during WWII, housed in the relicts of former churchwarden’s house on St. Ulrich Hill near Ljubljana. The project represents small part of greater memorial park, which today has an important role in the system of recreation areas of Ljubljana.
The opened ground floor of the churchwarden’s house (mežnarija) is closed by metal meshes to give room for the textual and graphic part of the exhibition, while the cells in the basement where the victims were tortured are preserved in their original state, including the clay floor. They are only dimly illuminated, the door wings are replaced by new, deliberately bigger metal ones, too big to ever be closed again. They also serve as a background for portraits of victims and their birth and death dates.
The project’s main goal was to make this exhibition and memorial of small fiscal dimensions most eloquent with as fewer means as possible.
The opened structure of the remains of the former churchwarden’s house (mežnarija) is closed by a simple metal mesh to protect the place from uninvited visitors – a spider’s net that represents the times gone by since the original purposely does not fit within the openings’ dimensions – to explain that it was put there in a different time from that of the original. The elements of the exhibition are simple so as to be understood by the widest possible audience.
The project's simplicity also aims at reducing the need for the object’s maintenance.