It would be difficult to mention here all the Kovačić's realizations and
projects. His opus colud hardly be quoted by any other architect. Numerous
private buildings, shops, and restaurants followed by the buildings of
schools, faculties and offices. Each and everyone has its own story, its
"law" and its truth. In each of them the finnesse of details,
sought after and worked out to the minute detail, is being interwoven
with the concept of the whole and with the pure characterization of the
times to which it belongs but without negation of the past. Where some
are striving after future, in others the elements of the romantic concept
of the joy of life are turning into a story approaching a fable. So, let
us keep ourselves to the essence of his approach, to that what makes Kovačić
himself, to that what is most accurately showing the intertwining of his
soul and his talent.
It is almost as if Kovačić had attended the Kahn's lecture at the last
CIAM Congress in Otterlo, though at the time he could not have heard of
him. The Kahn's question: "A school? What is the existence-will of
a school? and the answer" ...a school is a series of spaces where
it is good to learn... "Kovačić enlarges on that statement: a school
comprises a series of functions that could be spatially organized. In
a school there are spaces for preparation, spaces of theory and spaces
of application. And spaces which connect, which bring together: the public
spaces. To fully understand the problems of a school, Kovačić is talking
to professors, pedagogues, and psychologists. And finally he asks to be
given one class lesson so that he could ask the pupils: "Write in
short what is a school for you?" After getting the answers he was
impressed by the text of a girl: "Write at the entrance door "Good
luck!" as it is written for the miners above pits' entrances".
Again, a reflection is being aroused as to what is standing behind this
sentence of a young girl's soul. So, the school he is designing (with
four different schools within it with defferentiated programs) is starting
to get the answers like: a large entrance hall, where all the spaces are
coming together, has become, in fact a public space with even a pedestrian
route for the tenants from the neighbourghing houses passing through it.
And there is a bench under the tree while the large birdcage connects
again this public character with the presence of life. Communications
are the streets of circulation, and their niches spaces of preparation
and verification. Thinking the school, thinking why a girl asked for "Good
luck!" to be written above the entrance and thinking how to transform
this happily into the spaces loaded by themselves with the idea of happiness,
remained the theme not to be avoided.
|
| Write at the entrance door "Good
luck!" as it is written for the miners above pits' entrances |
Perhaps someone would ask the question what conditioned formal interpretation
of such a school. As if the slopes forming the outer spaces as well as
the treeless grass surfaces stand in contradiction with the former themes
of architectural approach. The answer is in the architect himself whose
developing vocabulary is inevitably reacting to the time of the realization
and transponding it into the experiential world. Because a distorted,
"order" of the mixed-development corner building of "Dvornikovi
dvori" could pose the same questions. And the projects for the "Plaza"
hotel in Omiš or the ones for the Faculty of Economics will also demonstrate
a distinct liberation of the author from predetermined regularities and
so the origins of the "starter stone" will acquire flows freed
from architectural interpretations in which partially supported hovering,
striving after suprematic structuration by help of differentiation of
structural interpretation, will become a new story of the Kovačić's architectonics.
In contrast to my person who in his life spent rolls and rolls of sketching
paper and who taught its own hand to "think subconsciousness",
Dinko Kovačić did not need such paper at all. He is not acting until he
has not "seen" everything that will happen. Until a "starter
stone" turned into visualization of shapes. And so the connection
between the thought and materialization become the essence of creativity.
With some sparks and some strayings, the beginning of coming to life of
the "philosophy of reasonableness" and the ever present life
is running on. Because for him the architecture is not only "a play
of volumes under the sun". It is becoming a value only when reaching
its fulfillment of being in its complete existence connected to a certain
theme. To create, for example, the "Hanibal" restaurant on the
island of Hvar, to transform the rest of the outer areas into the ownness
of the focus, to turn the exterior into the interior, could be accomplished
only by help of reflection springing out from the soul of the deep wish
for it to happen, not without ambition, in a manner of one's best self.
And in this way an aspiration after the best in a given task. The axis
of wooden floor laths hovering above the pebbles, its direction determined
by hand rail on both sides leading into intimacy of dining, roughly-cut
stone pillars supporting the roof, almost coming from the Roman times,
all this is a part of the story of the experiential world of a great but
not less ambitious intention. Or in his own words: "In all my efforts
I was trying to find agreement and measure. An agreement between the Contemporary
and the Traditional, a measure between Contentment and Happiness".
Because contentment is only superficial, it is only part of that which
could be bought. But happiness is the essence, it is transforming reasonableness
into the value of existence. To pepole and birds, to stone and tree. To
flowers and olive tree. So when, on the boat sailing along the shores
of Brač with the summer school students, he starts with his high pitched
tenor to lead the song "Sveeeeeeeeeetivaneooooood moga Trogira..."
this happiness and humanity is bursting out in all the pores of a dialogue
with the humming sea, rocks and agaves carrying the flower of so much
beauty as of tragedy of humanity.
Boris Magaš
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 Next > End >>
|
Boris Magaš: About the origins
