P5 excursion - Zagreb
Savksa Street, Zagreb (Croatia)
Tales from Savska
This is the report of the Zagreb based workshop of the students from the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. In the first weeks of this project we concentrated on our fascinations and our perception of a street. This research was to land in a project on what was to be the location for this project, the Savska street in Zagreb, Croatia. The workshop was held between September 23rd and 26th 2009.
On Wednesday 23rd professor Lada Hrsak welcomed us in Zagreb. She took us for a tour through the city. We started to drive from the new part of the city towards the old centre of Zagreb and up into the hills. During the tour we stopped at several places, the museum of modern art, the National Bank Cooperative Housing blocks, the Mirogoj Cemetery and we passed by a lot of different typologies of housing blocks. Then we went to the University of Zagreb and met the students whom we were working with during our stay in Zagreb. We presented our work to the students. The Croatian students chose a model designed by the Dutch students and explained to the group the way they felt connected to it. According to the connection the teams were made and we made an approach for the project we were going to work on for the rest of the week in Zagreb.
Our hotel was located at Savska street, the location of the project, so we started the day with a walk through the area of Savska street in teams. After making many pictures of the street and getting to know each other, we met at the university where we attended a lecture on the history of Zagreb. After lunch we worked on the projects in groups until the end of the day. We had dinner with Professor Jukić. Afterwards Lada Hrsak took us for a walk through the old city and showed us the view over the city by night. Later that evening we met the Croatian students in the city centre for drinks.
Savska street, Zagreb (Croatia)
On Friday we continued working on the project and just before lunch we attended a lecture about how the strip in between Savska and the railway could look in the future according to a computer-rendered project, making the strip into a dense high-rise area with roads in the air. When we left the lecture room the weather was so nice that we had lunch in the park. After a discussion with the professors we worked hard to finish in time for the presentation the next day. All groups helped each other to finish their models. With a short break to eat pizza that we ordered at the university, we worked until three in the morning and finally went to the hotel were we had a drink in the bar
On Saturday, with only a few hours of sleep, we went back to the university to find the studio in exactly the same chaotic state as we left it. With a little help of the professors and their assistants we managed to clean the room and set up the tables for the presentation just before the first guests arrived. We presented our projects and the process that led to the final result to our professors and a team of experts from the field of architecture. The enthusiastic comments we got were positive and helpful in working further with our designs and looking critically at our design process.
After our presentations we went home to refresh and meet up at the Art Pavilion Zagreb to visit the exhibition called LABILITY by Ivana Franke. It was an inspiring combination of a completely empty and darkened late 1800 baroque building and a couple of amazing light installations. It would be to hard to explain exactly what it was, but it was definitely fascinating. We met up with the Zagreb students for our next cultural stop, a modern dance show by a number of upcoming dancers. The quality of the performers varied a lot and we were hungry so we hurried to dinner (men to the golden arches, girls to a fine Italian restaurant). With half a litre of coke the men were ready to go to the next cultural stop while the girls went to bed. At five in the morning the Dutch men and the Zagreb students stumbled out of the nightclub, packed their stuff, emptied the minibar and went into the taxi that took us to the airport for our flight home to Amsterdam.
Tutors/Professors
Tihomir Jukić, Alenka Delić, Rob van Leeuwen, Lada Hrsak
Assistants
Marina Smokvina, Mojca Smode, Nikolina Muža
Students
Arjen Aarnoudse, Ana Dropulić, Anton Krluk (pedestrian highway); Michiel van Driessche, Kristina Rogić, Antonija Serdarević (taking the street out); Tara Steenvoorden, Danko Jović, Maja Bilušić (excavating the past); Elisabeth Keller, Maja Šnajdar, Erna Fekete (blue arrows to quiet spots); Annemarijn Haarinck, Martina Kapuđija, Filip Kožulj (3D diagram); Michiel van der Drift, Ivana Brkanić, Daniela Babić. Marina Brigić (traffic crossing); Bo Winnubst, Kristina Martinec, Antonija Sekelez (highrise street); Victor Spijkers, Ana Vračarić, Helena Šantek (the wall/line)
Assignment
1 The first part of the project is dedicated to discovery and application. What is a street and how can we describe it? Do you remember a street in a dim light of the morning, or the smoke and smell of baking chestnuts? Or playing football in the center? We take a stance starting form personal memory, fascination. Very precise. That can be anything... As long as it's personal. That is how we describe the world. Main challenge of this studio is that we learn from our conciousness. We also take all our professional and emotional knowledge in describing and designing it, but, we will also forget all about it at the same time. To get to reshold of making. To make a link between our skills and the stomach.
There are a few rules: it doesn't have to relate ro any given scale, function or reality, only to space. In this first part we develop the tools that lie closest to fascination itself: the body; for instance, story-telling, filming, hand-drawing, building models. The outcome is an image/model/film of the street.
2 The second part is a four day workshop at the University of Zagreb, together with an equal number of Croation Architecture students, that starts with a proposal, and elaborates into a design that is also a hypothesis: what Savska Cesta needs is...
3 The third part of the project, back in Amsterdam, is an elaboration: actually designing out of the workshop results, elaborating the role of fascination, bringing it into reality: a design. The outcome is the development of a personal tool that can be added to what we have learned in school and by experience, and can be applied whenever we deem it appropriate.
Outcome
What is the best place to describe from? It's good to be at a distance to make conclusions
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (1972)
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