Damjan Popelar

FROM NATURE TO THE WORKSHOP
Even during my studies in architecture, my work gravitated more towards the natural landscape than the built architectural environment. I wove dresses around old willows, stacked stones into spyral dry wall and created stick structures around trees, etc.
Balancing a regular job and family life, I adapted and moved my creativity into my home workshop, where I have spent the last decade handcrafting architectural models of vanishing Slovenian vernacular architecture. These buildings hold beautiful memories from my childhood, when I spent carefree summers in my grandmother’s old farmhouse.
I am still inspired by anonymous vernacular architecture, the work of simple masons and carpenters.

ARCHITECTURAL MODELS
My passion for model-making expanded to include disappearing vernacular architecture across Europe, America, and other parts of the world.
Windmills, water mills, timber-framed houses, apiaries, covered wooden bridges...
The beauty of vernacular architecture lies in its simplicity and functionality. It is built sustainably, tailored to human needs, from natural materials. These buildins are no longer built, and the existing ones are falling apart, so I try to preserve them in the form of fragile wa...

The Faculty of Architecture at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Year 2002

In several galleries and museums across the Slovenia and abroad:
2012_Faculty of Architecture, Munich, Germany
2019_CEEC Expo, Ningbo, China
2023_Apimondia Congress, Santiago, Chile
2024_Art Talent Show at Genova Art Fair, Genova, Italy
2024_LAB ART PRIZE VENICE'24, Imagoars, Venice, Italy
2024_ArtBias Show 2024, Golden Duck Galery, Budapest
2024_Arte Laguna Prize, Arsenale Nord, Venice