engleski

Architectural Modernism as Bearer of Cultural Identity

The essential precondition for constructing a functioning strategy of preservation of modern architectural heritage is its adequate and comprehensive valorization, and the awareness of its meaning and value. What is it that makes modern architecture so valuable? What is it that justifies its status as cultural heritage and validates the need for its protection? And above all, what is its potential for sustaining and upholding such substantial categories as cultural and national identity? Seemingly, architectural modernism does not possess such strengths and promises ; it namely deliberately departed from tradition and history, it negated the idea of historical continuity, it embraced function, construction and technology as sole formative factors, and on top of that, it employed, as its main formal tools, the operations of abstraction, rationalization and formalization, i.e., mechanisms that render it deeply non-representational, non-figurative and non-rhetorical, depriving it of the ability of carrying meaning and sustaining identity. This paper addresses precisely this question – can architectural modernism, in all its formalization and autonomy, still be representational and rhetorical? Can modern architecture, in its abstractness, still be figurative? Can architectural modernism be a genuine bearer of identity and cultural memory? The discussion will attempt to trace the values and qualities of Croatian architectural modernism – all the way from the 1920s and 1930s throughout the second half of the 20th century – seeking to prove just such potentials and promises of Croatian modern architecture. By disclosing rich layers of local modern architecture culture, it would try to verify its worth and justify the need for its careful and responsible preservation.

Cultural Identity; Croatia; architectural modernism; functionalism; representation

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