Marjetica Potr

"I have three different practices in my life. One is on-site participatory projects,
which I do in collaboration with other professionals and with my students. The
second is architectural studies, and the third is drawing narratives." - Potr

-Pragya Vedprakash |

 Marjetica Potr(born 1953) is an artist and

architectbased inLjubljana, capital of the Socialist
Republic of Slovenia, which was then part of the
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The Slovenian artist and architect is internationally
renowned for her on-site projects in which her multidisciplinary approach merges art, architecture and
social science.

Caracas:

Dry Toilet,
2003,

building material,
power and
communications
infrastructure

an ecologically safe, waterless

toilet was installed in the upper
part of the La Vega barrio, a
district in Caracas that has no
access to the municipal water
grid.[2] Dry Toilet is one of a
series of community-focused onsite projects by Potr that are
characterized by
participatory design and a
concern with sustainability
issues, particularly in relation to
energy and water infrastructures.

House for
Travellers
Building material, 2002
'Go-Home', Sarajevo, BIH
I built the House for Travelers
for a family of refugees who
live in Ljubljana. The house is
modeled after a UNESCO
resettlement project in
Kenya. The dwelling consists
of a tin roof on stilts and a
small room for safeguarding
possessions. In both
Ljubljana and Sarajevo, the
temporary structure was
given to a temporary social
group. Residents made their
own improvements on the
houses.

Istanbul: Rooftop
Room

Magadan
Site specific

building,
building materials, 1997
'Skulptur. Projekte in Mnster',
Mnster, Germany

Magadan, a project named after a Far

Eastern Russian port city, begins with a
walk through a huge World War II bunker
and ends with a shanty structure built in
the open area of the moat. Magadan
references both the urban voids of
Mnster, of which the bunker is one
example, and shantytowns. Shantytowns
and urban voids are both common
features in the contemporary city.

Building materials, energy and

communication infrastructure, 2003
'Poetic Justice' The 8th International
Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul
Rooftop Room is a site-specific project
realized for the 8th Istanbul Biennial. It
consists of a tin roof constructed on
top of a privately owned flat-roof
house in Kustepe, Istanbul. After the
exhibition closed, the family who lives
in the house replaced the temporary
curtain walls with permanent walls.

Siena: Urban Agriculture

Building materials and energy infrastructure,
2003
A hydroponic vegetable garden is cultivated
on the roof of a privately owned building in the
city of Siena, Italy. The project focuses on
notions of self-sustainability and private
space. In this way, an experiment in urban
agriculture -- an approach that has been
recommended by the World Bank for such
fast-growing cities as Cairo and that is being
Thtre volutif'
implemented in Caracas -- now finds a home
in Siena.

at Place Andr Meunier in

the Saint-Michel
neighbourhood of
Bordeaux enacts a form of
coexistence between the
architectural structure
(Chantier architectural)
and the social structure
(Chantier social)

The Cook,
the Farmer,
His Wife and
Their
Neighbour

Building materials, energy infrastructure, vegetable garden, 2009

Stedelijk Goes West, Nieuw West, Amsterdam
Project by Marjetica Potrc and Wilde Westen (Lucia Babina, Reinder
Bakker, Hester van Dijk, Sylvain Hartenberg, Merijn Oudenampsen, Eva
Pfannes, Henriette Waal)
Supported by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Far West, Amsterdam;
The Netherlands Architectural Fund, Rotterdam
The project is a community garden and community kitchen in the
Nieuw West district of Amsterdam. A previously unused site at Lodewijk
van Deysselstraat 61 becomes a community kitchen. The vegetable
garden is located behind the kitchen in a former fenced-off 'look-only
garden' (kijkgroen). The garden and the kitchen create bonds within the
neighbourhood and become a catalyst for transforming not only the
public space but also the community itself. The project is an example of
'redirective practice', with people from various disciplines and
backgrounds working together to find new ways to build a shared
community. The project is a case study for redesigning the modernist
neighbourhood from below and redefining rural and urban coexistence.

From Walls to
Islands, 2011,
series of 12
drawings

Two Faces
of Utopia,
1993

In a New Land
Ramot Polin Unit with
Sukkah, 2011, building
material and water-supply
infrastructure.
In the gallery, Potr
combines the
dodecahedral unit
designed by Israeli
architect Zvi Hecker in
Ramot Polin (Jerusalem)
with a sukkah, a temporary
shelter used during the
religious festival of Sukkot.

Potrc pairs the Ramot Polin unit with a sukkah, a temporary shelter
traditionallybuilt and usedduring the Jewish festival of Sukkoth. By
pairing these two different structures, Potrc presents a real-life case
study focusing on the original organic forms of the housing units as
altered by the rectangular forms added by their residents. The
symbiosis of these two opposing forms is immediately evident
when one looks at Potrcs installation; although each structure has
a life of its own, both are sheltered from the outside by walls which

In a new
Land, 2011,
series of 11
drawings

Marjetica
Potr,
Prishtina
House,
2007.

This Place is my Place - Begehrte Orte, Kunstverein,

Hamburg, Germany.
Prishtina House is a case study of a house in the Peyton
Place neighborhood of Prishtina. After the collapse of
modernism, the citizens of Prishtina began building their
houses in a wide range of styles,

The World
of Things

The World
of Things

The World
of Things

Isolation and
Connectivity

Between the Waters: The

Emscher Community
Garden / Marjetica Potrc
and Ooze

The Brant
Club
Mural, public
debates,
workshops, 2012
The Musagetes
Guelph Program,
Guelph, Canada
The Brant

The main interest of Marjetica Potre is urban societies of the world. She is particularly interested in
the contemporary city: cities laid out according to a plan, and also cities that feature an empty

the so-called urban void

space within their cityscapes . These urban voids can

live a double life. They either represent abandoned residential areas - or an empty house within a
cityscape - or are filled with unarticulated housing construction, tenements and other types of

House for
Travellers, 2000,
urban installation

architecture. She tells the stories of modern cities with an

attitude

emphatically emotional

and calls our attention to them in her writings

"Empty houses or empty cities which have been

abandoned by their inhabitants are never a neutral
space. They are either frightening or beautiful" .
One cannot speak of a neutral space even if we have in mind a public space like a dormitory
complex or a residential district of random construction such as the favelas. All of them are very
closed communities, very strong, but under even stronger control. But Potre believes that the
planned cities and the favelas nevertheless have something in common. They are both
constructed according to an overall plan that makes living in them difficult. The
unbearable conditions in favelas are generally well known, but the problems of planned cities are
less evident. However, these cities are not only problematic for the people, but also for the cities
themselves. They are all keenly aware of the fact that once such a city is firmly rooted, its growth
runs out of control. This type of field research is much more to the artist's liking than the installation
of some kind of metaphors-in-galleries. In the field, she gathers information on local materials,
which she then uses in the construction of her structures in the landscape or in the gallery. Her
projects transcend their representative value. If at all possible the artist allows them to be
upgraded by local people or visitors.

 I believe in art. People need

art to negotiate their world.