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Significance of Transitional Conditions for Contemporary Urban and Architectural Practices Case Croatia, review of the book Project Zagreb: Transition as Condition, Strategy, Practice by Eve Blau and Ivan Rupnik

Global and irreversible as they only are, conditions of instability and unpredictability in which architecture and urbanism are destined to operate today keep raising the question of possible ways of productive architectural intervention. What modes of architectural and urban intervention might be functional in conditions of irresolution and discontinuity that structure our reality? What mechanisms might be compatible with the complex, heterogeneous, dynamic networks that constitute our environment? And, how must our usual planning methods necessarily change in order to produce any meaningful effect? Such essential questions initiated lately a whole wave of interest for research and mapping of contemporary city, all with the idea of discovering in it both the ruling contextual phenomena and adequate conceptual solutions to deal with those phenomena. It depended on the specific potential and experience of the city under analysis, as well as on the resourcefulness of its analyst and adequacy of applied exploration techniques, whether the outcomes of such research might prove not only (locally) relevant and satisfactory, but might also transcend the specificities of a particular case and acquire some broader, universal relevance. Precisely in view of this hoped-for broader relevance of such studies for today’s urban and architectural practices, Zagreb as a subject of analysis seemed to be a promising choice. Namely, if the condition that architecture and urbanism must confront today is indeed that of instability, irresolution and discontinuity, on all levels of complex integral reality, then Zagreb may just as well serve as its very model and epitome, as it is precisely these unpredictable dynamic conditions that have been Zagreb’s natural environment for more than 150 years, all throughout the period of its modern urban development. And if, on the other hand, Zagreb’s modern urban structure – as built, performed, and lived – showed at least a measure of an internal logic, coherence and legibility, then that would suggest that the city developed a certain functioning modus operandi with this very instability. This modus operandi with the condition of transition might then be the city’s credit for its broader relevance for today, and it is precisely this potential that the authors of Project Zagreb – Eve Blau and Ivan Rupnik – intuited when initiating their research on this exciting postsocialist city. This texts presents and discusses the broad investigation carried out in the book Project Zagreb: Transition as Condition, Strategy, Practice by Eve Blau and Ivan Rupnik, and examines its meaning and relevance for our present urban and architectural condition.

Zagreb; transition as condition; contemporary architectural practices; urban strategies

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