A glimpse of the Skušek Apartment(s) and their lived-in collection
Text by Max Frühwirt
Due to Ivan and Tsuneko having neither the funds nor the connections to actually house their collected pieces in a museum of their creation when they returned to Ljubljana, as they may have originally envisioned, they instead opted to live with part of it and exhibit it at their apartment(s). There, they invited people to experience their collection in their own walls, almost like an interactive and immersive show in its own right. For this reason, this post attempts to shed some light on the Skušek’s living conditions.
Tower of the building the Skušeks used to live in, Screenshot by Max Frühwirt © Filmske novosti Beograd, 1957
Close up of the same building and tower today, Photograph © Gerald Kozicz, 2022
It is unclear, how often the family moved after their return to Ljubljana or many different apartments the Skušeks used to live-in, and clear numbers have not been released yet due to lack of material and documentation. However, it is at least confirmed that they inhabited three, possibly even four different places. And while the identification, and, as a consequence, recreation also proves more than challenging – again due to lack of documentation and archival material of the time – the movie produced in 1957 at least provides some evidence of their living quarters. As a result, the building of Strossmayer street Nr. 3 in Ljubljana has been identified as location of one Skušek apartment.
Strossmayerjeva ulica 3, formerly home to the Skušek’s living quarter, nowadays houses a nursery school / kindergarten
With the Strossmayer apartment being the only clearly identified home to the Skušek collection, it has been decided to base the virtual reconstruction and immersive experience on the rooms of the former apartment.
While exact floorplans, sections and / or photographs of the interior of the kindergarten will not be published or made available, mainly due to the sensitive nature of its modern-day use, it was still possible to reconstruct the overall layout of both the building around the time the Skušeks inhabited it as well as their overall apartment layout based on sketches.
Floorplan of the first floor of Strossmayer street 3, plan and interior not to scale, © Max Fühwirt, 2025
The created floorplan, while based on sketches and documented room measurements of the apartment, however, is not an exact replica of the original layout at the time of the filming of the movie in 1957. This is because an exact replication is basically impossible at this point, given the lack of complete documentation and plans and since the rare available sources claim different interior room distributions. The plan is therefore meant more so as a sketch of what Strossmayer street most likely could have looked like at the time, based on existing data and the building’s exterior dimensions and placement of windows.
Identified rooms of the former Skušek apartment, plan not to scale, © Max Fühwirt, 2025
Using the rooms shown in the 1957 movie as a baseline again, it was then possible to even identify at least three of the rooms the Skušeks must have inhabited.
Tsuneko opening the two glass doors to the room with the dresser, a second set of glass doors visible in the background,
Screenshot by Max Frühwirt © Filmske novosti Beograd, 1957
Screenshot of Tsuneko walking across the room with the Dresser 01, Screenshot by Max Frühwirt © Filmske novosti Beograd, 1957
Layout of the possible biggest / main room of the Skušek apartment based on the movie, plan not to scale, © Max Fühwirt, 2025
Screenshot of Tsuneko walking across the room with the Dresser 02, Screenshot by Max Frühwirt © Filmske novosti Beograd, 1957
Screenshot of Tsuneko walking across the room with the Dresser 03, Screenshot by Max Frühwirt © Filmske novosti Beograd, 1957
Finally, it was possible to draft and sketch a rough layout of how the different pieces of furniture and art were assembled and exhibited within the Skušek’s lived-in collection. It is, however, unlikely that the couple permanently had everything exhibited in the way as it was shown in the movie, as the screens present in the recording block both access to the rooms oven as well as general access to what is believed to be the apartment’s main entrance. The movie could therefore very well be another example of the curated experience the Skušeks were presenting to their visitors. Furthermore, it is also unclear, how the configuration of the collection may have differed across the different apartments the family inhabited. Nonetheless, the apartment at Strossmayer street provides some valuable insight and its configuration and overall layout of the presented objects has thus been chosen as a baseline for the virtual reality experience as well.
References
Filmske novice 1: Zanimiva zbirka. Avtor Vladimir Perišić, © Filmske novosti Beograd,1957. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFDnA8UzBr0