The exhibition stems from the idea of creating a dialogue between two worlds that have travelled different paths over the last century and a half. The instrument through which it was decided to build this relationship is architecture, especially the iconic one, i.e. architecture that is able to document the identity, political and economic ambitions of different communities over time. Architectures that have had a symbolic relevance for their territories, or that represent litmus tests for recording trends, openings, influences, even moods at various moments in history.

The chosen reference point is the diptych, i.e. the side-by-side presentation of images of buildings constructed in the two countries. More than fifty of them are presented in the exhibition, with a simple but effective criterion to suit all periods of interest. The diptychs present buildings of the same type and cover three periods: the years leading up to the First World War, the period between the two wars, and finally the decades after the Second World War up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and thus the establishment of the Republic of Slovenia. A visual and critical experiment that unfolds through the photographs of Roberto Conte and Miran Kambič, two masters of narrating built space.

Roberto Conte and Miran Kambič were therefore called upon to rethink points of view from the perspective of comparison with the other. The exclusivity of a shot or of the architecture itself is thus set aside in favour of dialogue and visual dialectics.

All in the belief that architecture is not only a valuable historical document, knowledge of which is indispensable for understanding who we are, but that it possesses something more, something unique. It is not simply a museum relic, an archival testimony on an urban scale, available to a limited number of scholars and enthusiasts. It is alive, it represents a physical fact that – with its shape, size, spatiality, urban or environmental relations – participates in the present time. It is a cultural expression that is transmitted and rooted in our minds, even without us being aware of it.