Graduation project
The Most Beautiful City in the World
Eva Bevec
A video essay contrasts the opinions of a resident, a municipality employee and an urban planner on how to design the city of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Tending a vegetable garden in post-transitional Ljubljana situates today’s gardeners at a peculiar intersection of contrasting ideologies. The scarcity-motivated traditional practice of bottom-up self-organized community gardening called ‘vrtičkarstvo’, has come to be seen as a dysfunctional remnant of Yugoslavia's socialist past. Consequently, it has faced both ideological opposition and legislative aggression from the profit-oriented local government, which seeks to redesign and rebrand the city. Appropriating the slogan of this urban transformation initiative, The Most Beautiful City in the World is a video essay juxtaposing conversations with the designer’s grandmother, a municipality employee, and a critical urban planner. Who has the right to design in a city condemned to beauty?