Mafia Science Café

Mathematics, physics and architecture are sciences that are much more interconnected than they first appear. All real relationships between outer and inner space can be explained and predicted in physical terms. The passage of heat, moisture, sound and light through architectural envelopes and barriers follows the laws of physics. The fundamental principles of rhythm, composition, proportion and geometry are derived from mathematics. Classical art theory establishes a close link between mathematics, architecture and music. This coherence is so deeply and so self-evidently embedded in the essence of architecture that it is often forgotten in our post-classical era. As a result, the material embeddedness of space in the environment is lost, as well as its abstract purity and axiomatic consistency.

The interior design project of the Mafia café in the building of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Ljubljana is a bold example of reinterpreting the relationship between mathematics, physics and space. It is a caricature of relationships. It is a promotion and illustration of regularities in the world of forms, furniture and ambience.

Mathematics and physics have in common that they are expressed in equations instead of words and sentences. The two disciplines are brought together in the same faculty, but apart from the fact that the faculty is separated into two buildings, mathematics and physics, they are also separated by other, scientifically driven, starting points. This is countered by the long-term vision of the Faculty’s leadership, which aims to be inclusive and cohesive through new investments and content. As a model example of a participatory project, all the faculty staff contributed one equation each, which we combined in collaboration with graphic designers into a continuous digital printed wallpaper that hugs the entire perimeter of the space. The 360-degree panopticon is interrupted by spectral beams of light. The geometric pattern of the dropped ceiling is an articulated play of the substructure system and the fillers. The wooden ribs, all of uniform length, meet at pentagonal nodes where the sides intersect at angles of 72 and 104 degrees. The pattern described here was devised by mathematician Roger Penrose in the 1970s. It is certainly one of the most notorious aperiodic patterns, which never repeat geometrically when expanding to infinity. The furniture, benches and tables are joined together by magnets in distinctive Rubik’s Snake patterns.

When designing a space, we rarely prioritise its form over its content or purpose. In this case, however, it is a deliberate architectural experiment that identifies the common spatial identity of the faculty through the language of forms and meanings. The café’s many years of successful operation and its great popularity among students and staff prove that design has an extraordinary power of meaning and belonging – something that is unnecessarily forgotten in the age of globalisation, modernism, the merging of cultures and the resulting collective alienation.

Architecture by BLENKUŠ Matej; CIMPERMAN Katja; CVETREŽNIK Anja