The needs but also the Split the ambitions were great. The town was rapidly
growing and large areas intended for new construction were opened. On
the town planning competition for the so called "Split III"
the winning was a Slovenian team with the then actual theme of returning
"to the street". A clever connection with centuration was crucial
in convincing the jury that the right choice was made. Model of the new
low rise structure forming at its back a space that could be conditionally
called "the street", to be along its full length closed by a
very high continuous building and where a view of the sea was to be secured
all one above the other, became the theme of the new construction. A series
of such model complexes will form the part of the town in making. The
theme, at the time of its inception, undoubtedly carrying initial qualities
is, if nothing else, representing on attempt of trying to find the way
out from technocratic understanding of the up to date urbanization whose
zoning was turning the town areas into the remains of the inter-play of
single buildings. The task posed before the Split architectural forces
was not an easy one and was requiring, besides understanding, also a talent.
But the first agglomeration of the new urbanity was realized: Kovačić,
signing the scheme with architect Zorić, built the Brothers Borozan street,
i.e. the Street of Šime Ljubić.
All that was clear and verified in the
first realization has been retained. But this is not a verification on
the level of school clarity: pure, vertical planes are heading towards
the sky, but in a free, dynamic sequences of creative aspiration with
plasticity of balconies jutting out. The high building is not a continuing
block of dwellings but modulated plasticity whose play under the sun is
bringing along the richness of experience and characterisation. Vegetation
is in every place where concrete "did not destroy an olive tree".
The so called "street", without the beginning or an end, is
acquiring in its stepped modulations its own ambiental values. There,
the children will find themselves as well as the persons dependent on
the idea of the neighborhood. Modest modulation of balcony railings, as
an attempt at enrichment without a foothold in experience, clearly demonstrate
the shortcomings of the Zagreb school of that time. But also some themes
that the Zagreb school was not teaching were started: besides the architecture
in a clear dialogue with the sun, a dwelling for the Mediterranean way
of life was developed. The flat that in the conglomeration of some ten
staircases, lifts and entrance doors is recreating the contact between
persons sharing their existential spaces. This is not a flat within a
model of official categorization of typological construction. The table
space is becoming a central point of happenings in the closest contact
with the housewife and her kitchen duties, but also in the closest contact
with the living and TV room. This dwelling represents the sum of ambiental
qualities not only connected by functions, but joined together by the
life itself. It is difficult to avoid the association with an ancient
English hous of the Shakespearean times that Kovačić did not know at the
time. The examples of such houses are today shown to the tourists as a
special attraction of Stratford upon Avon. The table is in these cases
turned into a symbol of the house itself and its goings on, the place
of life and death, of the quest and the host, and from which a modern
terminology is extracting the whole range of internationally present and
used expressions within dominating influence of the English language circle
(board in, out, with, boardinghouse, board a train, Board of Education,
Trade etc., etc., down to the chairman of the Board or chairwoman).
In
this concrete Split example, without any connection with English historical
examples, it has its own roots in the life of Dalmatian people and it
acquires its specific, domestic character. This flat is a continuation
of ambiental qualities meant for the life of those inhabiting it., to
enter a little into Heidegger's terminology. Those thoughts that were
leading a young architectural student of the Zagreb Faculty in his search
and conceptions are here beginning to be realized. So the first built
block became a synonim for "New Split" but the same time the
culprit for the perpertuation of the Slovenian thesis in Mediterranean
surroundings. The talent of the author has turned the Slovenian theme
into the story of a new conception by creating a relationship with the
sea and blending it into the maximum play of vegetation. The continuation
of the theme will raise all the questions present up to these days.
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Boris Magaš: About the origins
