Plecnik: The Complete Works

Architectural Review, The, August, 1994 by Andrew Saint

Plecnik is hot property at the moment. Ljubljana, where his redoubtable buildings and monuments abound, is fast turning into Plecnik-town on the circuit of architectural tourism. There in his homeland of Slovenia, he has never been forgotten since his death in 1957. Diligent Italian scholars began to pick up on Plecnik in the late '60s. A little exhibition about him was held in Oxford in 1983, a large one in Paris in 1986. Now comes Krecic's book. Though imperfect, it is the fullest English-language account of the great Slovenian we are likely to get.

Plecnik appeals just now because he can be made to face all sorts of ways. He bucks the puritanism of the Modern Movement without anticipating either neo-classical fogey-dom or captious, deracinated post-modernism. By virtue of his training under Otto Wagner and precocious early buildings like the Zacherlhaus in Vienna, he belongs to the progressive tradition. The Vienna jobs and those in Prague -- the restoration of Hradcany Castle in Prague for President Masaryk and the broad-backed Vinohrady Church -- prevent him from being written off as a mere regionalist. Mediterranean classicism, national romanticism and an arts-and-crafts attitude of mind fuse indistinguishably in his work. Above all, the humanity of Plecnik's countless Slovenian buildings, the warmth and richness of his materials and ornament, his individuality, his constant experiment with form, his interest in little things and his profound Catholic faith, slake the thirst of architects seeking for sincerity outside the worn-out orthodoxies.

All the projects are there in Krecic's book, and that is its chief value. Previous writing on Plecnik has been selective and many of the late buildings having hardly been discussed in English before. Intellectually, Krecic's is very much the view from Slovenia; Vienna gets short shrift. Where he analyses Plecnik's thinking and temperament he is excellent. But there are too many long and unimaginative descriptions of buildings, hard to match up to the illustrations and plans. The stand-alone colour plates are excellent.