The workshop, organized by Architectural Association, took place at the new, highly specific building KSEVT, Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies, a bold landmark in the tiny Slovenian village of Vitanje of 600 residents that has welcomed over 25,000 visitors in its first year of activity. KSEVT has a public significance and generates social, cultural, and scientific activities, with fixed and temporary exhibitions, conferences and club/study activities. There is an open need and an exposed potential of Vitanje to become a case study of developing an extreme set of bottom up strategies or prototypes to challenge the conventional notion of tourism. The natural condition of Slovenia as a fragile but diverse landscape and the local phenomenon of obsessive individualism provide principal conditions for nanotourism.
Nanotourism is a new constructed term, describing a creative critique to the current environmental, social and economic downsides of conventional tourism, as a participatory, localy oriented, bottom-up alternative. Nanotourism is beyond tourism, it is more an attitude to improve specific everyday environments and to open up new local economies.
How can KSEVT accommodate sleepovers? The site-specific added value to the KSEVT exhibition is the experience of levitation in an environment of gravity. The team’s field of research was the transition from conventional 2D sleeping to the experience of 3D sleeping. The KSEVT hotel offers two experiences. The individual version enables the researcher to spend the night in KSEVT by sleeping in a uniquely engineered levitation-suit, suspended in the central space of KSEVT. With the collective experience, a group of people is able to experience 3D sleeping as an extended feature of the exhibition, where a set of pyramid shaped cushions support your entire body in a custom 3D position while asleep. The concept of the KSEVT hotel and 3D sleeping embodies the unique program of KSEVT – it fulfills the accommodation needs of the institution and furthermore upgrades an already unique visitor experience.
CREDITS.-
Project name.- KSEVT Hotel, From 2D to 3D Sleeping.
Workshop.- AA Visiting School Slovenia: nanotourism nanotouristic strategies in Vitanje, July 2014.
Tutors.- Aljoša Dekleva, Tina Gregorič. Co-tutors.- Jakob Travnik, Blaž Šef.
Team project.- Samo Bojnec – Slovenia Natalie Jasinski – Poland/Austria Kaja Švab – Slovenia Vid Žnidaršič – Slovenia.
Contact.- AA Visiting School Slovenia. Programme director: Aljoša Dekleva. Programme assistant: Jakob Travnik.
Photograph.- Ajda Schmidt.
2014 students.- Samo Bojnec – Slovenia. Natalie Jasinski – Poland/Austria. Jurij Ličen – Slovenia. Marijan Ladić – Croatia. Janaina Lisiak – Brazil. Anja Petek – Slovenia. Arefeh Sanaei – Iran- Kaja Švab – Slovenia. Valentin Tribušon – Slovenia. Dorian Vujnovič – Croatia. Runze Wang – China/Australia. Zizhengyan Yang – China/Australia. Aleš Žmavc – Slovenia. Vid Žnidaršič – Slovenia.
