Great Speaker at SHARE X: Špela Videčnik, co-founder at Ofis Architects – Slovenia

Join us at SHARE X – Conference for Advanced Architecture! 

The future of architecture is inevitably linked to advanced technologies, innovation, and design. The 21st edition of SHARE in Bucharest, SHARE X – Conference for Advanced Architecture, will dig deeper into some of the perks of these tech stacks.

Disruptive technologies, innovative materials, and Advanced Building Skins – this is SHARE X; a different type of conference where technology meets architecture!

Špela Videčnik is the co-founder of the internationally recognized architectural office Ofis Arhitekti, based in Ljubljana. Along with Rok Oman, they have guided since 1998 the evolution of the office in an upward direction, managing to impose with a broad spectrum of architectural themes approached, with different dimensions, functions and environmental conditions. The vast majority of their projects are the result of the competitions they have won, having as main topic the taking over of the principles of traditional architecture to reintegrate it. 

Possessing a well-defined architectural discourse, Špela Videčnik still believes that architecture remains dependent on the design of space, spatial relations, and that it should temper the nature of the interior and the exterior space as well. The awareness of taking responsibility for the context translates into the architectural gestures made by their designs, using sustainable materials, finding and understanding the existing tissue substrate to optimize the whole process.

“Inspiring Limitations”, the Ofis Architects approach in architecture

Strongly influenced by the values ​​of the Bauhaus school from the time of her studies in the architecture faculty of Ljublijana, but especially during her teaching time at Harvard, she translates those principles into notions that build an architectural vision that folds into the current situation. The projects she proposes as defining her career are from different functional fields, each one being the exponent of Ofis style approach directions.

Another spectacular project of the Slovenes is Basket Apartments in Paris, where each apartment is volumetrically individualized by geometrical movements on the front facade, while also defining a well-balanced intimacy. Open on the street, and with a narrow and very long site, the building plays with perception, the dynamics of the facades managing to create the illusion pursued by architects, namely the verticality to temper the horizontality of the building.

@2012 – Basket Apartments | Image by: Tomas Gregoric

Ofis’s main tendency is to preserve the vital elements of the existing site, seeking to take advantage of the natural advantages offered, integrating the natural dimension, as observed in the FC Bate Borisov Football Stadium in Belarus. 

@2014 – Football Stadium Arena Borisov | Image by: Tomaz Gregoric

Špela defines the term home as a cocoon, a self-sufficient space in which the feeling of security, approach found in Living Unit, a modular structure consisting of flexible wooden housing, which can be adapted to a wide range of locations, climatic conditions, and land.

@2017 – Living Unit | Image by: Janez Martincic

Two recent Ofis projects are the winter shelters in the Slovenian Alps, these being imaginative processing of the vernacular architecture of the alpine region, offering them contemporaneity through the negative and positive games offered by the succession of wood with glass.

@2016 – Winter Cabin | Image by: Janez Martincic

@ 2015 – Alpine Shelter Skuta | Image by: Anze Cokl

Špela Videčnik and Rok Oman teach, run studios and workshops in various Schools for architecture including Harvard Graduate School of Design, Architectural Association in London, ENSA Paris Val de Seine and Faculty for architecture in Ljubljana.

Meet all of our amazing speakers joining us at the conference:

• Marcos Cruz – professor of Innovative Environments, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UK (Keynote Speaker)
• Špela Videčnik – founder at Ofis Architects, Slovenia (Keynote Speaker)
• Helmut Kinzler – head of the Virtual Reality department at Zaha Hadid Architects, UK (Keynote Speaker)
• Sanjay Puri – principal at Sanjay Puri Architects, India (Keynote Speaker)
• Mariano Efron – partner at Architecture Studio, France (Guest Speaker)
• Anna Wendt – director at BuroHappold Engineering, UK (Guest Speaker)
• Pepe Gascón – principal at Pepe Gascón Arquitectur, Spain (Guest Speaker)
• Lightning Designer Natalie Redford – associate director at KSLD, UK (Guest Speaker)
• Christian Sandor Tscherich – senior architect at LAVA, Germany (Guest Speaker)
• Landscape Architect Lara Zureikat – associate director of Amman’s Center for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE), Jordan (Guest Speaker)
• Alexandru Găvozdea – president of the Romanian Order of Architects – OAR, Romania (Chairman, Member of the Board of the Event)
• Șerban Țigănaș – president of SHARE Society, General Secretary UIA, Romania (Member of the Board of the Event & Editor)
• Marian Moiceanu – rector at the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Romania (Member of the Board of the Event)
• Florin Mindirigiu – President PRO event Association & Founder of CCA-CEE (Event Director)
• Bogdan Zaha – lead architect at Zaha Hadid Architects, UK (Moderator)
• Vlad Tenu – lead architect at AHMM, UK (Moderator)

The event will take place on November 14, at Radisson Blu Hotel, Bucharest. 

Get your delegate pass for the conference!