An exhibition about Biba Bertok is on display at the Museum of Architecture and Design.

She was guided by functionality, form, production, and technological requirements (in particular typification and standardization), market performance, and socially balanced living conditions. Biba designed more than forty furniture systems and programmes over the course of her career, most of them for serial production. She maintained that “breathing humanity into life in modern concrete cells of dormitory towns” was a central priority in her work. She succeeded to do this by using colour and textile, and ensuring that her multifunctional furniture could adapt to various user needs, spatial conditions, and budgets.

Bertok understood well the technical conditions of highly industrialized production processes and systematically harnessed this knowledge to improve her designs. With her systematic design approach Biba developed furniture systems that harnessed the Slovenijales company’s expertise and paved the way forward and beyond Slovenia and Yugoslavia to demanding foreign markets. As one of the country’s pioneers of systematic furniture design, Bertok left a defining mark on the development of furniture systems in Slovenia. As the first display of her body of work, the exhibition encourages further research, additions, and reinterpretations; and underlines the importance of context in better understanding both the role and perception of women in an industry dealing with everyday objects and design more broadly.

Curators: dr. Barbara Predan in Špela Šubic

Co-organisers: Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana and Pekinpah Association