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Bakema and Zagreb: Team 10 Ideas Shaping the Socialist Metropolis

Jacob Bakema got acquainted with the Croatian architectural scene in 1956, through his contact with the young Croatian architect Radovan Nikšić. In 1956 Nikšić namely worked in the Rotterdam office of Bakema and Van den Broek, thanks to the scholarship that he received from the Netherlands government. In 1956-1961 Nikšić realized his Workers’ University in Zagreb – the masterpiece of Croatian post-war modernism, paradigmatic example of ‘total plastic reality’ in the service of ‘Socialist enlightenment’. On Bakema’s invitation, Nikšić presented this extraordinary work at the last CIAM meeting in Otterlo in 1959, manifesting the correspondence of his architectural concept with Team 10 ideas and Bakema’s theories. This paper proposes to trace this convincing correspondence and affinity between Team 10 ideas and Zagreb’s architectural and urban responses through 3 examples in 3 different scales. One would be this outstanding building – Workers’ University – an impressively pure and abstract spatial construct, wrapped in transparency, with space flowing freely trough it to connect the whole structure in a single spatial unity. It will be assessed through the idea of flexibility (flexible ground plan in which units could change and enable redesigns according to the program) ; the issue of function and identity (political training of workers of the ‘Socialist self-management’) ; and the idea of city–building (cultural ambition of developing a new city district and overall community). Second moment of Bakema’s presence in Zagreb was his own plan for the urban center of New Zagreb, which he personally presented in Zagreb in 1965, followed by the publication of his theories in Croatian architectural journal Arhitektura. Terms of mobility, identity, changeability, development, neighborhood, clusters, mat-building, patterns, etc. were thus launched in Croatian theoretical scene. The paper will trace the echoes of these ideas and their potential influences, but also their correspondence to the ongoing urban developments. Third aspect would be the analysis of the overall impact of Team 10 ideas (especially those of Candillis, Josic, Woods, and the Smithsons) on the development of New Zagreb, as Zagreb’s broad post-war urban extension, developed as a composite urban system consisting of intricate neighborhood units.

Radovan Nikšić ; Jacob Bakema ; Team 10 ; post-WW2 architectural modernism ; Zagreb

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