Slovenia (Republic of)

The Slovenian Pavilion turns the spotlight on craftsmanship and the essential and irreplaceable skills and techniques it brings to the construction site. The development of artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and robotisation in construction, paired with the tendency toward uniformity and prefabrication, is geared towards eliminating the unpredictable human factor from the construction process. On the other hand, this development has laid bare the shortcomings of mechanisation and revealed the valuable knowledge inherent in the practices and professions rooted in physical labour and handiwork. It is abundantly clear that the quality and development of the built environment still largely depends on the expertise of craftspeople, the only ones with skills that are indispensable for a plan to materialise as an object.
The Slovenian Pavilion spotlights their expertise as the key intelligence factor in the construction process, and displays a series of totems constructed and realised as a physical manifesto of craftspeople’s knowledge and skills. Totems — spirit beings, objects, or symbols — serve as an emblem of a group or clan of master artisans, but they are themselves masters: not only because of what they represent, but because they “know more”— more than those who look at them, and more than those who made them.