The Faculty of Architecture and Design at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava presented its work again in 2026 on the international UNFOLD platform as part of the Milan Design Week, hosted at BASE Milano and in collaboration with Domus Academy. The Data[LAB] studio showcased its latest pedagogical and research output responding to the theme “Design for Compromise”, which explores design as a tool for mediation between opposing values and approaches.
The presentation included the project Echoes of Copper, created by student Laura Zolnianska. The work was developed under the guidance of lecturers Martin Uhrík, Roman Hajtmánek, Vladimír Hain, and Alexander Kupka. The project engages with the industrial heritage of the Medený Hámor site and reflects its current state between preservation and transformation. The program also featured an invited lecture by Martin Uhrík and Roman Hajtmánek titled Extended Entities, focusing on the relationship between the virtual and the physical object in contemporary design.
Echoes of Copper
The project interprets the tension between past and present as a creative principle. Through a participatory workshop, it combines traditional craft techniques with digital fabrication to create a space for collective making. Under the guidance of the author, participants produce table lamps by combining hand‑hammered copper, galvanic coating of 3D‑printed objects, and an experimental material based on carnauba wax with a copper surface. This hybrid process highlights the relationship between precision and randomness, control and openness. The resulting objects carry traces of individual intervention and material behaviour, while also referencing the industrial memory of the place. The project thus links material research with participation and proposes possible scenarios for the future activation of the site.
Series of Echoes of Copper lamps. Photo: Laura Zolnianska
Extended Entities
The lecture Extended Entities presents the concept of the extended entity, in which the design object is understood as an interconnected system of virtual and physical states. It emphasizes the role of friction as a productive principle arising between digital prediction and material reality. This approach allows design to be seen as an open process based on a cycle of generation, testing, and feedback, in which objects continue to evolve over time.
Invited lecture Extended Entities. Photo: Tibor Varga
