PINNED! explores the visionary urbanism that has shaped Ljubljana over the past twenty years – a vision intended to make Ljubljana a more animated, connected, liveable, and human-centred contemporary city.
This bold and substantive transformation drew attention and admiration from all corners of Europe and well beyond for its ambitious, innovative, visionary efforts – and culminated in recognition in the form of the European Prize for Urban Public Space 2012, the European Green Capital Award 2016, and more.
PINNED! aspires to embody the spirit of this process and hints at the ways visionary urbanism can reshape a city and with it the very lives of its people – today and in the decades to come.
PINNED! then is a story of the transformation of the City of Ljubljana (MOL) under the leadership of Mayor Zoran Janković and the direction of Vice Mayor and de facto City Architect Janez Koželj. Similarly, it is a story of urban acupuncture – a term Koželj himself likes to use to describe his approach of individual strategic interventions large and small throughout the city. Through the more than 50 built projects that Koželj oversaw over his 20-year tenure, Ljubljana experienced enormous, largely positive change.
For its part, the exhibition employs an urban acupuncture that mirrors that practiced by the City to mark a wide array of projects, from parks, riverbanks, and bridges to squares, museums, and entire developments. Further, the exhibition is organised around six core themes: Heritage and Innovation, Public Space, Green and Blue Spaces, Adaptive Reuse, Mobility and Fluidity, and Social Connectivity. [And features a handful of key, award-winning, pivotal projects, including: car-free Slovenska street, the Ljubljanica River embankments, Center Rog creative and social center, and Cukrarna Gallery.]
The now legendary pedestrianization of Slovenska Street, which rid the city's biggest, busiest traffic corridor of private traffic [Public Space as the Soul of the City] opened up an entirely new public space and reclaimed a vast area for pedestrians, cyclists, and more. It is also a classic-turned contemporary case of reuse or repurposing [Adaptive Reuse & Hidden Layers] from heavy, overburdened corridor to extended open – and exceedingly popular – public platform. Changing the traffic regime recalibrated the city's mobility equation considerably [Mobility & Fluidity] and has given rise to new social patterns and connects people in new ways.
Today, Ljubljana is a decidedly more beautiful, balanced, dynamic, social, engaging, and liveable urban environment. Which changes were decidedly among the aims of the city administration and by indirect extension the people of Ljubljana and beyond. But change not for the sake of change itself, nor toward mere beautification, nor for the sake of some anonymous urban entity, but for its inhabitants and user/visitors alike – toward a better, higher quality of life.
Ultimately, such ambitious initiatives open up fundamental questions – questions that compel us to consider just what we want from our city and how we want to inhabit it; and what we can do to make that happen.