Biba: Function. Idea. Context.

The fundamental principles that consistently guided Biba Bertok in her design practice were functionality, form, production and technological requirements (particularly typification and standardisation), market success, and the humanisation of living. During her professional career, she designed more than forty furniture programmes, most of them intended for serial production.

She was among those architects and industrial designers who firmly upheld the view that design is an essential part of every product. Within the profession, she recognised two fundamental approaches: on the one hand, that of leading designers who forge visions of the future; and on the other, that of those who operate within everyday life and production and whose work has often been overlooked in Slovenia. As she wrote, these are “dedicated designers” who, while raising aesthetic standards, also strive to “raise quality at every level” – in living, development, and production. The protagonist of this exhibition undoubtedly belongs to this group.

Despite the proverbial slowness and rigidity of furniture manufacturers – as demonstrated by the fact that, despite numerous awards and commercial successes, Biba Bertok often encountered resistance from conservative commercial structures when working with large companies – she identified “the humanisation of living in today’s concrete cells of housing estates” as one of the key aims of her work. She pursued this goal through the use of colour and textiles, as well as by making furniture highly adaptable to different user needs, spatial conditions, and financial means.

At the same time, she had a thorough understanding of the technical requirements of highly industrialised production and systematically developed her work in response to them. As she wrote, she sought to “make effective use of the available production and technological possibilities” in order to achieve “a level of quality above the average in comparison with related programmes.”

She had already clearly defined all these principles in her first wardrobe systems, created at Alples. She chose a path of systematising furniture elements, which remained her guiding principle throughout her career. As part of this approach, she was also a pioneer in developing a universal furniture joint, for which she later obtained a patent. Significantly, she was followed in this direction by the much more widely recognised Slovenian industrial designer Niko Kralj, who developed his own version of a furniture system, Futura.

Biba Bertok’s carefully considered systemic approach to design enabled her furniture programmes, particularly Manta, to transcend the Slovenian and Yugoslav markets and open the way for the trading company Slovenijales into demanding foreign markets, drawing on domestic expertise. At the same time, Manta became a flagship production programme that, for its manufacturer, represented “the end of years of general decline, improvised programmes, and business failure.” Among the important innovations of Biba Bertok’s later period was the Plima furniture programme (1988), which included a dining table with an original extension mechanism and a variety of possible uses.

Through her work, the designer played a decisive role in the development of modular and system furniture in Slovenia and ranks among its pioneers. By presenting her body of work for the first time, the exhibition encourages further research, additions, and reinterpretations – including in the context of understanding and evaluating the role of women in the industry of everyday objects and in design more broadly.