ARCHITECTURE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
An Alternative Morphology of Contemporary Architecture in Croatia
Written by:
LEO MODRČIN
Not so long ago, the Ministry of Tourism of the Republic of Croatia launched an open call for a promotional slogan to advertise Croatia as an up and coming tourist destination. The winning entry, “Croatia: the Paradise on Earth”, was rejected on procedural grounds, despite the fact that most of its citizenry, and arguably most of the recent visitors to this tourist “it” destination would agree with such a proclamation. However, it could also be read as an act of ignoring the totality of the human industry and culture, which in its continuity of 2 millennia has produced a brilliant urban and artistic collection set in — alas! — a beautifully landscaped garden.
Under the aegis of the Croatian Ministry of Culture and the Croatian Architects’ Association, we present here an architectural exhibition to be shown in different gardens of the world. Our intention to create a content for cultural exchange in which architects and general public might connect with the profound architectural production centered on a single national territory, stemming from a single, unique architectural culture. Certainly, we hope to provide a new focus on our own self-awareness as architects, as well as extend the myopic boundaries of a national architecture. Here by we extend our invitation for you to visit but also to discuss and contemplate architecture in general.
In 1764 Robert Adam, the noted British 18th century architect introduced Split’s Diocletian’s Palace to the world through a folio of exquisitely etched renderings as the architectural crown jewel of the Croatian coast. We continue in his steps, by presenting a selection of Croatia’s modern and contemporary architecture, not associated with the rigid, Euclidean architectural language (which marks the mainstream of architectural production) but featuring a constant stream of liberated architectural spaces, inspired by and moulded together with the landscape.
The mainstream of Croatian architecture has been clearly defined by formal language of the modernist origins. To this day, that approach to space-making has not been merely a stylistic choice, but one that has responded best to the limited resources of the land at the outskirts of the empires that once governed it, or the political systems that turned Croatia into an eternally developing country. This tectonic culture has always translated the scarcity of means into a particularly reductive quality of its architecture, turning it into a profound and sincere expression of a distinct architectural culture.
The recycling of its Roman urban under-layer and the Diocletian’s Palace itself, with its plug-in elements that transformed the original matrix into a living city — each epoch adding in its own vocabulary of shapes, forms and uses — became a kind of manifesto, a mythical building manual that still resounds to this day. What we today know as sustainable architecture has in fact always been practiced in Croatia, and for that matter in many other places with limited budgets, not by choice but out of necessity. Today, this fact might as well be their advantage.
The notion of architecture gentle to its surroundings, logical and economical in its construction, is being questioned only now that the whole building paradigm in Croatia has been changed. Thanks to the free market bonanza, given the right budget, it makes no difference if one builds in Croatia or anywhere else. As the developed countries are coming to terms with their mea culpa of the exuberant consumption of goods, energy sources, and resulting imbalance of natural environments, we are embracing a new architecture that blends super-computed manipulation of the complex process of building and the softening of architectural form in order to reflect the newly found ties and responsibilities to Mother Earth. One could perhaps look back at places like Croatia to find the most acceptable principles of building right there where restraint became a conceptual tool.
However, the power of Croatia’s landscapes, the tectonics of geological and biological formations on a very condensed territory, all proved to be of a secondary importance for its architects but still a constant that in today’s reading can achieve a new meaning, an alternative body of work suddenly brought to a new relevance. As a rule, the platonic architectural object was seen as the principal goal and a complement to natural setting, a dialectical counterpoint. The dividing line between the artificial and the natural has been very clear and expressive in most cases.
A scientific approach to the morphology of the “organic” tendencies in Croatian architecture, as demonstrated in the process undertaken together with my colleague Maroje Mrduljaš, is not strictly defined, or even possible. Despite the not so abundant selection of projects, thematic pairings could go in many directions and common themes could be found in some other pairs. As Mrduljaš succinctly points out in his introduction to the selected works, our choice might only superficially be read as figurative listings, yet we are probing the complex configurations of the works. The thematic selection mixes chronological and generational facts, disregarding whether the projects are built or not, whether they were conceived as an experiment or a manifesto. Regardless of the architectural language they employ, they all demonstrate a deeply rooted connection to the land and the processes that shape it.
This is a somewhat formal approach to architecture, as opposed to the more common tools of retrospection applied to the recent architecture in Croatia. The curatorial approach is tied to the shifting socio-economical system and the practical strategies Croatian architects had to adopt in order to practice in a volatile uncertainty of the changing world around them. The focus was the maverick, can-do attitude of the protagonists of the transitional period in the most recent Croatian architecture. Here we search for an alternative architecture that sought organic spatial freedom or systemic origins. This affirms the selected works as an alternative to the mainstream of the local, Croatian architectural production, and in turn places them within the mainstream of the global architectural discourse.
The travelling exhibition is happening also in parallel to the “digital morphogenesis”, practiced in the architectural academia and theory of today. The predominant world of ideas has become a mainstay in thinking about and teaching architecture. It is a new way to fuse architecture and building systems, as well as a growing formal interest of the chief protagonists on the architectural scene. By adopting the morphology of the two basic elements of landscape — geology and biology — this architecture implies individual expressive freedoms for its protagonists and a new relevance as a generator of progressive social change.
The theoretical platform that equates natural models with the ability to compute ever larger sets of parameters forming and fabricating a piece of architecture in all of its aspects — and not only a seductive organic morph — has yet to be introduced to architectural culture and pedagogy in Croatia. What has become a central intellectual search in global architecture, coupled with a clarion call for sustainable behaviour in life and building, has in the context of a smaller, resourceless society been tested in the real-world conditions and will perhaps reach its momentum not as a stylistic import but as generic development tied to the organic search for architecture of the land and for the land itself. Thus, what might be perceived as a marginal phenomenon at the outskirts of the architectural spotlight, could now be interpreted as a genuine contribution to the dialogue of the moment and a reversal of fortune: what has happened on the geographical margins of architecture might be suddenly recognized as the best possible answer to questions that are the focal point of a global discourse.
The travelling exhibition is happening also in parallel to the “digital morphogenesis”, practiced in the architectural academia and theory of today. The predominant world of ideas has become a mainstay in thinking about and teaching architecture. It is a new way to fuse architecture and building systems, as well as a growing formal interest of the chief protagonists on the architectural scene. By adopting the morphology of the two basic elements of landscape — geology and biology — this architecture implies individual expressive freedoms for its protagonists and a new relevance as a generator of progressive social change.
The theoretical platform that equates natural models with the ability to compute ever larger sets of parameters forming and fabricating a piece of architecture in all of its aspects — and not only seductive organic morph — has yet to be introduced to architectural culture and pedagogy in Croatia. What has become a central intellectual search in global architecture, coupled with a clarion call for sustainable behaviour in life and building, has in the context of a smaller, resourceless society been tested in the real-world conditions and will perhaps reach its momentum not as a stylistic import but as generic development tied to the organic search for architecture of the land and for the land itself. Thus, what might be perceived as a marginal phenomenon at the outskirts of the architectural spotlight, could now be interpreted as a genuine contribution to the dialogue of the moment and a reversal of fortune: what has happened on the geographical margins of architecture might be suddenly recognized as the best possible answer to questions that are the focal point of a global discourse.
We welcome this occasion to present the particular body of work in architecture at locations that should not be seen only as a package tour to a destination of the moment, but a place where architecture and landscape have been fused together in a relevant way. Whether the architecture of this fusion represents an original contribution to the intellectual discourse might be judged by the subsequent quality of unavoidable landscape consumption that is nowadays threatening the Croatian Garden of Eden. The hope is that the projects presented here will provide an answer, not only for Croatia, on how to turn the land grab into architecture.
ARCHITECTURAL CONFIGURATION
Written by:
MAROJE MRDULJAŠ
Could we analyze architecture by attempting reconstruction of its „physiognomy“, by determining some specific code built into each specific project? What would justify such a formal approach, especially now when global architectural discourse seems to have lost any common denominator, when heterogeneous design directions are so often being beaten to death in an attempt to achieve some aesthetic „uniqueness“ of each work of architecture? What type of architectural culture is being promoted by such an approach? Does this code analysis also imply some sort of repetitive call for architecture’s autonomy?
In any case, both „physiognomy“ and „code“ imply different connotations, ranging from biology to information technologies. It is exactly this range we are observing architecture in, i.e. as constructs sharing conceptual analogies with both bio-organisms and information flows. And yet, architecture is neither simply one nor the other. In order to move closer to a more open analysis of architecture, we are replacing the „object“ with a more open term of „configuration“, a term which in its standard linguistic usage already implies topography, shape and relationship between elements creating a whole. And indeed all of these three elements constitute architecture.
We are not looking at architectural configurations as mere combinations of „arranged masses or volumes“ but rather as systems (physiognomies) based on certain rules (codes) that are relatively easily intelligible. These rules can either be „programmed“ processes of form-making, application of certain geometric procedures — from structural iterations to topological deformations — or much looser, but still reflexive reactions to parameters of a certain place and certain moment in time. However, within these two extremes there always exists a readable relationship between designer’s decisions and architectural configurations, which is a prerequisite for some architectural project to be considered a reflexive one, and not a mere arbitrary or entropic construct. Thus we are interpreting the very meaning of a work of architecture by reconstructing design processes which take into account all three aspects of the definition of configuration: the natural or man-made ground, form/shape and organizational system. Neither one of these three aspects is a priori the most important one, but, depending on a situation and the designer’s attitude or his views, any one of them can become more or less pronounced, while neither one can be left out from the design process. Looking at a project in such way means moving away from conventional typological understanding of architecture as well as from morphological understanding of urbanistic structures - each project and each configuration is a „precedent in and of itself“, its own ecological reaction to the conditions found in a specific natural or urban environment.
If we are to accept particular configuration as a contribution to architecture, all of its elements -topography, form and organization of elements — ought to follow social, cultural and energy ecologies of a certain place and certain time. In analysis we are not interested in the „iconic“ qualities of the object, but in the integral process of creating architectural configuration and its functional potentials. The premise being that these configurative design processes offer greater potential for housing the multitude of ecological situations than the architectural artifacts that are results of processes in which programs get translated into objects in linear ways, or where programs simply get crammed into objects.
All of the projects selected for this show bring together nature, social life, specific programmatic functions and architectural physiognomy, not by following some naive and ideologically questionable ambition of achieving „total harmony“, but in order to have these diverse phenomena unify into open and stimulating environments, in which coexistence of both continuity and interruption, harmony and conflict, utopia and pragmatism will be possible, i.e. into environments able to deal with the dialectics of historical time.
In selecting and analyzing the projects special attention was given to their relationship with the environment, whether they follow and emphasize the given conditions or create their own “realities”. The comparative pairings for exhibiting the projects of Croatian architecture and architecture in Croatia work syncretically with various metaphors, in order to describe the characteristics of the chosen configurations and test working hypotheses on architectural configurations. We think that architecture’s emancipatory and progressive potentials are not yet exhausted. However, it is necessary to come up with strategies of subverting the well-known processes of instrumentalization, commodification and spectacularization of architecture.
What is evolution of modern architecture if not a continuous history of overcoming these processes featuring that never-ending “dead race” between avant-garde aspirations and power structures’ ability to absorb and adopt those very aspirations for their own benefit. Hence, our research moves in direction of questioning the dominant architecture discourse using the analytic methods proposed here, in order to promote one of many “alternative” ways of looking at the discipline.
WORKS
(Project Introductions by Maroje Mrduljaš)
Organic Visions:
JURAJ NEIDHARDT
Agava hotel, hipotethical location in Istria, Croatia, study, 1969
A talented apprentice of Le Corbuiser, Sarajevo-based architect Juraj Neidhardt proposed a self-initiated study of temporary habitat merged with nature as a critique of, in Neidhardt’s words “temple-like hotels”. Neidhardt designed an organic building consisting of public spaces and extremely small, but functionaland meticulously designed rooms.
The project is meant to stimulate the experience of landscape and Neidhardt explains its shape as a “concrete plant” seeded in nature. Gently designed hotel’s leafs encounter natural surroundings providing all rooms with intimate contact with earth, air, and sky. Neidhardt advocated the unique vision of vacation which would provoke active leisure, so that the hotel is equipped with amenities for hobbies, recreation and socialization. this formally poetic project offers affordable and spatially rich tourist development with the emphasis on the synergy of life, architecture, and nature.
ANDRIJA MUTNJAKOVIĆ
Homobil — HOME+MOBIL, Competition Entry, 1964
Homobil HOME+MOBIL is one of the rare Croatian genuine avant-garde projects in accordance with the time of its design, displaying a peculiar vision of architecture as organo-mechanic structure. Mutnjaković was interested in “kinetic architecture”, detached from all constraints and conventions of “static” conventional building.
While Mutnjaković was influenced by different modern avant-garde tendencies, in his writings he also expressed interest in texts and projects of the Renaissance philosopher and inventor Faust Vrančić of Croatian origins who experimented with the design of “architectonic machines” including the parachute.
Circularly shaped Homeo-bile is a totally transformable spatial device consisting of three types of elements: “cover-planes, partition-planes and walking-planes” powered by a centrally placed engine.
Reconfiguration of the structure is total, while its peculiar organic shape implies Mutnjaković’s striving for reconciliation of mechanistic civilization with nature.
Biomorphous Design:
ALISA ANDRAŠEK, EZIO BLASETTI
Biothing — Messonic Fabrics, 2007–2009
“In MF BIOTHING explored in-between algorithmic states by trans-coding 3 different algorithms. Electro-Magnetic Field developed through Biothing’s custom written plug-in for rhino was initially distributed in order to develop structural trajectories for the roof condition.
Resonating pattern was imprinted into the ground creating emitters for the second algorithmic logic _ radial wave interference pattern that formed global geography of the field. Finally, class 4 cellular Automata was used to re-process wave data by imprinting micro-articulation of the ground.
Zooming in and out of this field revels drifts in the character of the pattern. This effect is accelerated in the behavior of the CA pattern which drifts between distinct characters of rigid geometrical states and more organic states. This multilayered ecology is targeted towards large scale constructed landscape applications.” / Alisa Andrašek
IGOR EMILI
Pastry shop 6666, Rijeka, Croatia, 1972
The picturesque and trendy design of the pastry shop 6666 marked a departure from cool high-modernist style of previous decades. The undulating interior envelope forms flowing sub-spaces and challenges conventional interior dispositions, whilst furry carpet-like furnishing of floors and walls provide the shop with tactile softness. The strong orange color of furnishings and circular forms contribute to pop-styling and cheerful mood. Kaleidoscopic installation designed by the constructivist artist Aleksander Srnec was inserted into the enclosed storefront. It serves as a small and mysterious container with endlessly reflected cakes displayed in it. Its design is envisioned as uterus-like biomorphic environment and stands out in its aesthetic consistency and hedonistic atmosphere.
Free Forms:
ŽELJKO KOVAČIĆ, JAKOV RADOVČIĆ
Krapina Neanderthal Museum, Krapina, Croatia, 2010
Museum of pre-historic man in Krapina is carved into the hill creating cave-like, subterranean space that houses a multi-media exhibition venue. The round entrance hall forms a transition from the exterior to an embryonic environment.
A spiral ramp gradually unfolds into exhibition space without any apparent geometrical regularity. The hyper-realistic hominid reconstructions were done by the famous French expert Elisabeth Daynes. Interior surfaces are executed in exposed concrete which contributes to archaic, primordial mood of spatial configuration.
VOJIN BAKIĆ
Petrova Gora War Monument, Croatia, 1981
Although both socialist Croatia and Yugoslavia had their share of narrative, figurative monuments in the tradition of ‘socialist realism’, modernism was the dominant aesthetic expression of war memorials, uniqueunique in international context. The monument on the mountain of Petrova Gora was conceived as a large ‘inhabitable sculpture’.
Its dynamic and fluid form is abstract and Bakić established an exciting tension between its forceful artistic gesture and nature. The structure’s exterior is covered with a bluish metal that reflects the sky. The interior space is vertically developed as an extremely complex sequence of organically shaped superimposed levels. Here, the unquestionable monumental quality results from the authority of form, scale and dramatic setting.
Landform / Earthworks:
BOJAN RADONIĆ, GORAN RAKO
Mirogoj Cemetery Southern Arcade Extension, Zagreb, Croatia, Competition Entry, 1995
Neo-classicist Cemetery arcades designed by Herman Bolle are one of the Zagreb’s landmarks and important part of its urban identity. The project for the extension of the arcades avoids competing with the ceremonial monumentality of Bolle’s design and proposes a discreet earthworks intervention which strolls downwards from the old necropolis on the top of the hill. The New arcades are interpolated into a lengthy artificial knoll extruded from the base of the old arcade wall. The knoll envelops the new arcades and unobtrusively offers the grassy slope to the public space. The design offers a contemporary interpretation of commemorative architecture, which is delicately related to both the historical cultural context and nature.
ANA KUNST, ROMAN ŠILJE
Tourist Settlement — Parasite Hotel, Brsečine, Croatia, project , 2008
The project advocates a sensitive approach to Mediterranean coastline landscape which, in comparison to other European countries, is still relatively unbuilt in Croatia. The proposed tourist resort smoothly follows the topography of the hillside facing the sea. The terraced bands are a literal translation of isohypses into built form so that the architectural intervention, and consequently, composition are reduced to a simple reconfiguration of the terrain. The placement of the resort on a peninsula implied concave shapes, so that the units for living have open views towards the sea without interfering with each other.
Mutating Repetitions:
VJENCESLAV RICHTER
Housing Mega-Block, study, 1968
A versatile architect and artist, Richter developed utopian visions of the city and architecture during the 60s as counterpropositions for modern urban development. Richter, under the influence of the New Tendencies movement, based in Zagreb and devoted to the early investigations of algorithmic art, proposed a housing mega-block which curves in three-dimensional shifts and repetitions of a single modular unit.
At the peak of “dictate of the orthogonal” and the advancement of prefabrication in Croatian mass-housing architecture, Richer proposed a sophisticated concept capable of forming exciting urban configurations in which the sameness of the units was transgressed by “programmatic” shifts of the whole structure. The project was also rational in terms of application of prefabrication techniques.
ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS
Zagreb Airport -New Passenger Terminal, Croatia, Competition Entry, 2008
Contemporary researches in the field of parametric design introduced new spatial configurations of high geometric complexity. While Hadid’s work does not belong to parametric design in the strict meaning of the term, she has incorporated some of parametric design methods and tools into her distinct architectural language.
The proposal for the new terminal may be read as a fusion of contemporary biomorphic design and affinity towards fluid suprematist concepts, which resulted in a thrilling spatial configuration. Algorithmic mutations of the organic spatial configuration modules generate biomorphic tissue that offers a vision of a new type of collective space.
Second Nature:
BOJAN RADONIĆ, GORAN RAKO
Den Bosch Housing, The Netherlands, Europan Competition Entry, 1993
The architects investigated the orthodox typology of the modernist housing slab, which they transfigured into a hilllike structure with a green roof. The slabs with a curved section maintain the character of free-standing objects but also express a wish to integrate architecture with the terrain and establish a continuity of pedestrian lanes.
The repetition of the basic type creates a specific environment in which architectural artifacts create artificial urban topography. The straightforward gesture of creating inhabitable building bodies suggests a critical deconstruction of an atomized view on architecture, infrastructure, and landscape understood as separate phenomena.
PENEZIĆ & ROGINA ARCHITECTS
Handball Centre Svetice, Zagreb, Croatia, Competition Entry, 2007
The project of the handball complex is situated in the sports area, which is an extension of Zagreb’s main park Maksimir. The project houses two partly sunken sports halls in order to reduce the height and diminish the usual bulk of the sports centers.
Flat roofs with different levels are an active extension of public space, accessible over grassy slopes and ramps. Roofs are covered with a geometrically complex tent-like net, which is a support for vegetation. The authors envisaged the exterior of the building bodies as inhabitable and enjoyable social space sheltered and enclosed by the light envelope of greenery. The architecturally articulated green envelope thus creates, in authors’ words, a “second nature” in which building elements and vegetation are integrated into a new hybrid organism.
Topography Contested:
IGOR FRANIĆ
Pharmaceutical Faculty Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia, Competition Entry, 1997
The project tests different strategies of handling topography. The slope of the terrain is integrated into the section, while the landscape is here reinterpreted as a vast plane surface covering the terraced bulding body perforated by green atria which act as fragments of adopted nature. The design thus mediates elements of landscape into a geometrically abstract architectonic composition.
ANDRIJA ČIČIN-ŠAIN, ŽARKO VINCEK
Libertas Hotel, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 1974
Topography might be a challenge and a departure point for a design, especially in situations where topographical features are distinct or demanding. While the experience of landart works is surely a contemporary source of inspiration, some architectural works precede this artistic genre. The Libertas Hotel is a fabulous example of blending architecture and topography. Bands of hotel apartment cells with individual gardens follow the contour of the steep rock dramatically descending to the sea. The hotel actually reconstructs the natural shape of the slope. The brutalist architectural language of the building is robust, almost archaic, and corresponds to the Mediterranean landscape. The design organically reconciles programmatic demands and nature.
Environmental sampling:
BRANKO SILAĐIN
Croatian Pavilion Expo Hannover, Germany, 2000
The author responded to the topic of the millennium expo: “Man, technology, nature”. The volume of the pavilion was entirely veiled off by the running waterfall communicating croatia’s rich resources of clean water and Mediterranean identity. Visitors to the pavilion were surrounded by a projection showing Croatia’s scenery while walking over a glass floor below which different types of Croatian terrain were presented. Water and soil were samples of genuine nature, embedded in the exhibition’s multimedia scenario.
HELENA PAVER NJIRIĆ
Detailed Urban Plan of Gračani, Zagreb, Croatia, 2004–2008
The masterplan of Gračani, situated in the contact zone between Zagreb suburb and the Medvednica Mountain Nature Park had to combine a complex programmatic infrastructural mix (a cableway departure station, a large garage), different types of service programs, sports areas, and open public spaces. The authors implanted their proposal into the landscape and articulated the rooftop and the surrounding area as a new topographic and horticultural layer. Horticulture became the primary motif for unpretentious but thoughtful and subtle urban design, appropriate for sensitive environment. Organically shaped islands of different types of plants and flowers form a pleasant and modern environment with a carefully programmed scenario of seasonal changes.
Domesticated cells:
STJEPAN PLANIĆ
Villa Fuhrmann, Zagreb, Croatia, 1935.
The modernist villa designed for a handicapped person functions as a specific functional disposition of space without corridors, which enabled its tenant easy and fast mobility between the rooms. in his programmatic writings, Planić emphasized the “elasticity of the plan” and integration of the interior with nature. These ideas of porosity of the building organism came to fulfillment in round villa’s open and flexible organization and completely glazed front of the living floor.
Since the villa is placed on the edge of a hill, its round form also enhances the variety of vistas towards the valley and its surroundings. The simple, yet original concept of the villa reflects Planić’s interest in organic architecture understood as existential environment subordinated to the process of living.
ZOKA ZOLA
Rafflesia House, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Competition Entry, 2007.
The competition called for showcase proposals for a zero-energy home. The building is divided into seven independent “climate zones”, enabling creation of individualized micro-climate conditions. The circular shapes utilize wind patterns, which naturally ventilate the interior and the courtyard. The convex parts of the building envelope accelerate the existing air movement and direct it to the concave parts of the building enclosure. The undulating building body situated in the city park is porous and hovers above the ground. Architecture and nature are intertwined thanks to generous terraces and modulation of the terrain, which is incorporated into the house. The project is an interpretation of a “welltempered environment” in which architecture is understood as a sophisticated device-shelter that works with natural resources in order to save energy and achieve a high standard of comfortable living. Unlike many contemporary solutions, which are often just about “green” rhetoric, the Rafflesia House is an intelligent and honest response to ecological demands, while at the same time it offers an original dwelling type.
Crystalline Forms:
ANDRIJA RUSAN
Lumenart House of Light — Office Building, Pula, Croatia, 2007
Crystalline or geomorphic building bodies can be designed as intuitive investigation of form. This white, sharp-edged structure built for a lighting designer was developed through examination of the angular arrangement of the surfaces and openings in the building body. The envelope is completely independent from the rectangular interior. The gap between interior and exterior enclosures contributes to thermal insulation. Bright, white exterior planes are made of composite material with recycled glass. The form of the building is an abstract yet free form that resembles natural formations.
ANDRIJA MUTNJAKOVIĆ
National and University Library, Prishtina, Kosovo, 1981
The Library in Prishtina displays a method of generative growth similar to a process of crystallization. The building is composed of numerous cubical modules on several scales, covered with translucent domes. The design method is close to algorithmic or systematic art promoted in the sixties and seventies by the Zagreb-based New Tendencies movement . Mutnjaković refers to the Byzantine and south Mediterranean architectural
tradition of the repetition of spatial elements. The body of the building is
an accumulation of integrated modules which form a rich and fragmented
internal spatial fabric. The exterior is covered with a steel grid structure
that forms a unique three-dimensional pattern.
Superorganisms:
STUDIO UP
Zagreb Arena, Croatia, Competition Entry, 2007
The authors designed a multipurpose arena for sports and entertainment spectacles as a dome unfolded from the end of the inclined entrance platform of grand proportions. The mega-structural solution, which integrates an open public plaza and the interior of the arena, is capable of absorbing the flow of visitors like a gigantic cell with a porous membrane. The asymmetrical auditorium is a hybrid of Greek and Roman prototypes. Cyborg organism of masses of people and architecture is formed and arena acts as ultimate amplifier of ecstatic collective experience.
BORIS MAGAŠ
Poljud Stadium, Split, Croatia, 1979
While the stadium’s oval base lightly rising from the ground and elegant canopies may remind us of a seashell, the design concept with two open sides is based on integration of natural views towards the nearby hill of Marjan, one of the symbols of Split’s identity, and distant mountains into the scenery of the stadium. The nowadays common elliptical shape of the stadium was actually ahead of its time and became a prototype for many similar designs built worldwide. The stadium is distinguished for its efficient and ingenious structure. The cantilevered auditorium has no external supports thanks to the bracing beams which encirclethe shell and evenly distribute loads. The spatial sensation inside the arena is well-balanced and communicates with its surroundings. The logic of the structural system is clearly visible and the stadium acts like a huge and efficient organism capable of hosting mass events.
Isotopic Structures:
FOSTER + PARTNERS
Zagreb Airport — New Passenger Terminal, Croatia, Competition Entry, 2008
The present Zagreb Airport of modest size is situated in a beautiful pinewood forest and is neatly designed as a simple glass pavilion integrated in the park. Norman Foster proposed a new terminal based exactly on the conditions of the site, offering his architectural interpretation of an exciting and poetic glass forest. The pine trees are morphed into a structure of slender columns and the three-dimensional ceiling is designed as a fractal kaleidoscopic structure consisting of relatively simple glass planes. Stunning visual richness is achieved by simple changes of angles of glass elements seemingly extending ad infinitum. The interior of the Terminal glows it the daylight, while its spatial borders are fuzzy. The deployment of an endless repetition of the basic structural element as a prime architectural gesture challenges the notion of composition and proposes a non-hierarchical space, at the same time honoring its surroundings.
VJENCESLAV RICHTER
Yugoslav Pavilion, Milan Triennial, Italy, 1963
After a series of exquisite and internationally recognized neo-constructivist Yugoslav stands and pavilions at different international events, Richter designed one of his most original works which was awarded with the Triennial’s gold medal. Using a single element — wooden lattice — for the floor, vertical structure, and the ceiling, Richter composed an open, non-hierarchical environment with pulsating spatial/visual “densities”. The vibrant and complex space was created solely through the disposition of the vertical lattices. The structure was visually open and at the same time articulated as elaborated architectonic space. The exhibition with the topic “free time” was reduced to photographs, freely arranged throughout the pavilion environment which was also an exhibit in itself. While the departure point of Richter’s project was an abstract algorithmic, op-art concept, the resulting non-hierarchical and potentially endless environment resembles natural formations.
Mathematical Scupltures:
BRANIMIR MEDIĆ, PERO PULJIZ (DE ARCHITEKTEN CIE)
Cultural and Administrative Complex, Montreal, Canada, Comp. Entry, 2002
Medić and Puljiz won the competition for the ambitious multipurpose complex, which includes regional government, a music school and different types of public facilities. The interior of the large glass cube encompasses three freely shaped vertical “vortices”, which link different programmatic elements and create striking and complex public spaces. The advanced three-dimensional load-bearing structure, envisaged as a triangulated mesh meandering through the building as an organic skeleton, enables daring experiments with fragmented and fractal interior spaces.
The authors themselves describe their design method as “mathematical sculpture”.
IVAN VITIĆ
USA Pavilion Zagreb Fair, Croatia, study, 1965
One of the leading protagonists of the modernist movement in Croatia, Ivan Vitić, designed a structurally and formally original pavilion for the Zagreb Fair. The interior of the pavilion is completely free of columns since the building envelope is designed as a self-bearing triangulated structure. In this way, a total synthesis of form, function and structure is achieved. Its form is not composed, but generated by the structural system. Because of the refined and exposed logic of its body, the pavilion’s peculiar configuration can be perceived as analogous to natural processes of geomorphic crystallization or to biological evolution of form.
Cellular System:
VELJKO OLUIĆ, TONČI ŽARNIĆ
Bundek Residential and Commercial Centre, Zagreb, Croatia, Comp. Entry,2006
Extremely high density of the demanded gross surface area and programmatic elements directed this solution towards the concept of closely situated vertical blocks. Because of the proximity of built masses, open in-between space is perceived as a remaining void of dramatic, gothic vertical proportions. These voids work as a capillary system that feeds blocks with air and light. The complex pushes the notion of urban “culture of congestion” to its very limits. The density of programs, events, and built masses introduces an urban organism with a structure that could induce a new form of habitable landscape.
IVAN CRNKOVIĆ
Kindergarten, Samobor, Croatia, 1975
One of the leading protagonists of the modernist movement in Croatia, Ivan Vitić, designed a structurally and formally original pavilion for the Zagreb Fair. The interior of the pavilion is completely free of columns since the building envelope is designed as a self-bearing triangulated structure. In this way, a total synthesis of form, function and structure is achieved. Its form is not composed, but generated by the structural system. Because of the refined and exposed logic of its body, the pavilion’s peculiar configuration can be perceived as analogous to natural processes of geomorphic crystallization or to biological evolution of form.
Reconstruted City — Scape:
3LHD
Zamet Centre, Rijeka, Croatia, 2009
The Zamet centre refers to the dramatic topography of the city of Rijeka, which stretches alongside the hilly terrain below the mountains. The project is conceived as a progression of parallel bands, which either form a network of public spaces — squares, stairs and terraces or enclose interiors of buildings. The dichotomy between the building (figure) and the ground is deconstructed into a continuous architectonic city-scape. The bands, identical in finish, can be read as artificial relief extruded from the natural topography.
SAŠA RANDIĆ, IDIS TURATO
Fran Krsto Frankopan Primary School, Island of Krk, Croatia, 2005
The school in Krk meanders along the contours of the medieval structure of the city of Krk. The footprint of the school is adjusted to the existing parcels and streets. Its contour follows the inclination of the topography and the building body is aligned to the medieval city wall. Therefore, the building is adjusted to both urban and natural landscape. Its internal organization incorporates the slope of the terrain. Simple and robust architectural language contributes to the straightforward relationship to the environment. The inclined corridors and interior public spaces resemble the dynamics of the cityscape. The flat roof is covered by stone which is a sample of nature transposed into the city. With time, the roof will spontaneously host plant seeds and become green.
The Edge Condition:
NIKOLA BAŠIĆ
The Sea Organ, Zadar, Croatia, 2005
The Sea Organ is an architectonic instrument and element of urban design. The stone embankment gradually descends into the sea through a range of stairs. The convention of the hard edge between the embankment and the sea is transfigured through a geometrically simple architectural gesture, which brings together the sea and the urban ladcape. The stairs gradually change tactile qualities and their color from white to green, since they are colonized by algae. The relationship of architecture and bioorganisms is symbiotic and organic life evidently affects the changing appearance of architecture in time. A subterranean system of waterdriven pipes designed by sound experts generates the ever-changing tune played by the movement of the sea. “Concrete music” becomes an integral part of public space and the primordial force of the sea is given a new meaning and beauty. The striking architectonic simplicity and poetic approach soon attributed the project as one of the symbols of the maritime city of Zadar.
PETAR MIŠKOVIĆ, TOMISLAV PAVELIĆ
Row Houses, Matulji, Croatia, 2007
Row houses are situated in the dense mountain forest and the buildings’ section adheres to the inclination of the terrain. The sequence of interior spaces gradually unfolds towards the top of the housing unit articulated like a small watchtower with a private terrace. They shift and turn slightly, just enough to soften the edge between the two realms. Façade openings provide a generous view towards the surroundings. Houses do not try to emulate the bucolic surroundings, so that the edgecondition is created where architecture and nature meet.
Environment Mimesis:
RADIONICA ARHITEKTURE / ARCHITECTURE WORKSHOP
Archaeological Museum Vučedol, Vukovar, Croatia, project 2008
Vučedol culture reached its peak between 3200–2200 B.C., when it was one of important centers of early civilization on european soil. The archeological area is situated in the vicinity of the danube river. The Museum venue is sunken into the hill and the only exposed exterior elements are glass surfaces. The new construction incorporated into a hall forms a pedestrian ramp which is an extension of natural topography. The interior organization follows the exterior configuration. Visitors enter the museum at the bottom of the hill and rise towards the top where the ancient settlement was located. The intervention looks as if it had been organically molded by the inundations of the Danube river.
SAŠA RANDIĆ, IDIS TURATO
Rovinj Hotel, Croatia, Competition Entry, 2007
The picturesque historical city of Rovinj occupies a small peninsula and is distinct for its dense and organic urban tissue. The skyline of the city is dominated by the massive church of St. Euphemia and its bell-tower. The new hotel is situated at the place of the old facility near the last unbuilt part of the peninsula below the church. Such exposed location demanded careful approach. The new hotel is treated as earthworks which form a series of green terraces descending to the sea. The new construction with emphasized horizontal inclination is blended with topography and perceived as a restrained opposite to the congested verticality of the city.
Hanging Gardens:
ŽELJKA PAVLINOVIĆ, SAŠA KOŠUTIĆ, SINIŠA ILIĆ
Mladen Stojanović Park, Banja Luka, BiH, Compatition Entry, 2003
The project proposes the insertion of a new architectural network of biomorphic arteries into the existing greenery of the park. Continuous structures house a variety of programs. Subtle landscape design interventions are combined with advanced architectural solutions in order to create stimulating and flexible environment into which a mix of urban and natural elements and motifs brings a new type of contemporary park.
STUDIO BF
Jarun Panorama, Zagreb, Croatia, Competition Entry, 2008
After decades of stagnation of urban development, Zagreb undergoes a building boom. New skyscrapers are changing the skyline of the city and many new ones are pending for construction. While most of these new proposals are eloquently designed, only few introduce typological innovations. The Jarun Panorama housing offers a new vision of vertical habitat atypical for Croatia where skyscrapers are mostly associated with middle-class housing from the socialist period. A cluster of five informally arranged skyscrapers with essentially simple structure face the river Sava. The buildings incorporate terraces that create a pulsating vertical garden-city.
Radical Concepts:
ANDRIJA MUTNJAKOVIĆ
Urban Planning Yafo- Tel Aviv Central Area, Israel, Competition Entry, 1963
The competition for Yafo central area is a futuristic experiment in city morphology based on Mutnjaković’s concept of “machinourbis”, which interprets traffic flows as a major design issue. The curving urban tissue is the result of Mutnjaković’s critique of orthogonal structure as oppressive and oversimplified. The futuristic project proposes the placing of the traffic network on the top of the buildings similarly to LeCorbusier’s proposal for Algiers. Road nodes and paths are envisaged as multilevel platforms which can also accommodate “air traffic”. Vigorously composed clusters of circular shapes echo the author’s interest in suprematism. Mutnjaković strives to harmonize the “mechanics of traffic” and create an environment in which the ground is entirely freed for contact of citizens with nature.
LEBBEUS WOODS
Zagreb Free-Zone, Conceptual Project, 1991
In his “Radical Reconstruction” series, Woods designed experimental projects for damaged and decaying areas of the cities of Berlin, Havana, Sarajevo, and San Francisco. In 1991, at the very beginning of the war in former Yugoslav countries, Woods proposed several interventions for Zagreb. In his designs, historical urban tissue was colonized by complex “parasitic” architecture without obvious function, offering autonomous architecture as an agent of urban regeneration. Woods’s ideas deconstruct the hierarchy of urban structure and suggest a vision of city as a dynamic, heterogeneous formation whose components can be recycled and incorporated into new and exciting configurations. Woods advocates a liberated and politically engaged architectural position; his proposals are especially important as critique of the strictly functionalist notion of architecture understood as commodity.
Charged Landscapes:
VOJIN BAKIĆ, JOSIP SEISSEL, JURE KAŠTELAN
Dotrščina Memorial Site, Zagreb, Croatia, 1960–1976
During WWII, thousands of citizens were executed by the fascist Ustaša regime in the bucolic forest of Dotrščina on the outskirts of the city of Zagreb. In the early 1960s, Dotrščina was designated as a memorial site. The project was developed in several subsequent phases but only a part of it was realized. Yet, the initial idea of blending commemorative symbolic and recreational-leisure characteristics of the area was carefully applied. Natural features of the area were preserved while sculptural and architectural interventions were carried out within the framework of a non-hierarchical open system that can be expanded in time. The first sculptures built on the site were works of Vojin Bakić and they set the tone for further interventions. His crystalline, highpolish steel sculpture-objects were spatial markers, artificial effulgence in the nature. In Bakić’s words, the objects defied a graveyard-like atmosphere and promoted life instead of death. Equally abstract were architectural interventions in the landscape conceived as both land-art and utilitarian infrastructure.
HELENA PAVER NJIRIĆ, IVAN RUPNIK
5 Fountains On The Main City Axes, Zagreb, Croatia, 2009
The connection between the historical core of Zagreb and large-scale modernist housing estates extending to the south was envisaged in the socialist period to be established through a Baroque-like central axis. However, the axis was never completed and its current character is purely infrastructural. It is also very unlikely that it will be completed in the near future. The city government decided to turn a derelict sunken meadow lying parallel to two major Zagreb’s streets into a presentable linear urban stretch.
Architects attempted to create an active public space featuring a sequence of five fountains connected with the urban surroundings via pedestrian underpasses. Natural features of the project (water, greenery) as well as artificial elements (urban design) follow a legible set of precise geometrical rules and their mutations. Instead of insisting on monumentality, the project utilizes user-friendly urban design while the rhythms of the fountains introduce the element of time.
Landform Building:
3LHD
Freshwater Aquarium And River Museum, Karlovac, Croatia, 2015
Karlovac is known as the “city on four rives.” Its urban identity is strongly marked by impressive Renaissance fortifications comprising earthen walls and bastions. The structure of its historical core still shows the morphology of the planned city. The project of the Freshwater Aquarium and River Museum reinterprets these local identity features and organically blends them with the inundation area along to the Korana River. The exterior of the complex is entirely neutral with an inhabitable grassy knoll articulated in the form of infrastructural earthworks. Pedestrian routes take visitors through canyons that freely meander between the knolls towards the center of the complex. The spatially complex interior is a scenic simulation of the underwater world. The architectural object disappears in order to provide experience of the natural phenomena.
DAVOR MATEKOVIĆ / PROARH
Issa Megaron, The Island of Vis, Croatia, 2015
The remote island of Vis in Southern Dalmatia is an Arcadian environment still spared from extensive touristification. Architects were faced with an almost impossible demand of designing a building on an exposed site situated just below the summit of a hill. The project of a weekend family house responded to the challenge by embracing the topographical situation and integrating the structure with the landscape.
The intervention introduced an artificial topography’s constructed with strips following the contour lines of the hill and gently lifting up from the ground to enclose the inhabitable spaces. These geomorphic modifications and shifts created frontal terraces but also a backyard that enables cross ventilation. The massive and thermally inert structure covered with soil and vegetation facilitates the passive sustainability of the house. Executed in bare concrete, the house is almost invisible from a distance and reads like a continuation of the cultivated landscape marked by a network of dry stone walls.
Compounded Fragments:
BORIS MAGAŠ
The Squirrel Kindergarten and Nursery, Mihaljevac, Zagreb, Croatia, 1975
Located at a forest’s edge, the kindergarten is recognizable by an artificial landscape formed by oblique planes and a playful roof sitting on top of a mound. Its communal central area sits somewhat taller but following the same geometric rule regulating the entire building’s organizing system. By repeating the same basic module a configuration is formed that is in logical relation to its surrounding. On the street side the module is at its lowest and here the intimate spaces are located, partially sunk into the ground, while the roofs rise towards the forest side with their eaves above glass walls of living room units and terraces. It is on this same side that the building opens up to the landscape. The connections between the modules are articulated into “knots” with pyramidal skylights. Various interior spaces are formed by different gradations in formatting the children’s living spaces and by opening the building to the nature in various ways: to the meadow, sky and the forest. The regulator of these gradations and relationships is a geometric code pulled firmly throughout the entire building, resulting in dynamic collisions of planes at varying angles. The convention of an architectural object being “wholesome” and clear is replaced here by crystalline structure fragmented at both the macro and micro scale. The configuration marries together formal research and a desire to create an inspiring and unconventional pedagogical environment.
3LHD
Riva Waterfront, Split, Croatia, 2007
Extended between the front of the Diocletian Palace and the embankment, Riva in Split is the city’s most important social space. It accommodates rituals of Mediterranean style everyday life, large collective events like political gatherings and celebrations and it is also a popular tourist hotspot. Such diversity of different scenarios makes Riva a prime element of Split’s urban identity. 3LHD Architects redesigned it in contemporary fashion, employing the orthogonal pixelization of the ground as organizational principle. The pavement made of concrete “artificial stone” is combined with islands of greenery which, together with an alley of palm trees, form more intimate sub-spaces intended for rest and socialization. The paving and green pixels form a generic code for algorithmic distribution. The elements of urban design: benches, chairs and tables of cafés, as well as robust mobile sunshades are designed in stylish and contemporary manner with the intention to visually unify the area. Split’s Riva is a vital public space which brings together different generations, locals and foreigners, providing a welcoming environment for all sorts of human activities.
