engleski

Housing Exhibitions in Croatia in 1930s and 1950s – from the Subversive Critical Platform to the Vehicle of the New Ideology

Before the WW2, there were the two basic types of housing exhibitions – the exhibitions of new housing types, such as the Weissenhof Settlement, and less popular documentary exhibitions aimed at showing actual housing conditions. Three of the latter, documentary type were organized as thematic exhibition units and held within the exhibitions of Croatian Association of Artists Zemlja (Udruženje umjetnika Zemlja) in the 1930s in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia – Fourth and Fifth in Zagreb, and Sixth in Belgrade – thus pushing the limits of the established professional boundaries and entering the field of political activism. The first exhibition unit, called House and Life (Kuća i život) and authored by the Work Group Zagreb (Radna grupa Zagreb) brought into public eye the analysis of Zagreb housing conditions with an emphasis on the workers’ slums. Architect Stjepan Planić organized the second one, titled Countryside (Selo), which was aimed at presenting the living conditions in various rural parts of the country. Finally, the last in the row of these exhibition units, resulted in a thematic synthesis – Countryside and the City. (Selo i grad) At about the same time, the issue of urbanization and housing of countryside came into focus of the prominent European architects, namely Le Corbusier. By organizing the exhibitions in some of the most exclusive exhibitions spaces available, the architects used it as a platform to inform economic elites about harsh consequences of the housing and economic crisis – acute health and social problems resulting from substandard housing of the marginalized social groups, proletariat and peasants, which constituted about a three quarter of the Yugoslav population. Among the documentary exhibition materials were photographs, statistics, graphs, etc., utilized for an objective representation and thorough analyses of the existing state. What is more, the architects elaborated what was, in their opinion, the only possible solution – the planned social housing programs funded by the state government, the introduction of new housing typologies and construction technologies. They were therefore accused of the communist propaganda by the authorities of the totalitarian state, where the Communist Party had been outlawed already after the WW1. The housing exhibitions’ purpose changed after the WW2. Although the housing crisis was persistent in the postwar period, the exhibitions that took place in 1950s were focused on the fundamentally different goals. This partly resulted directly from the transition from liberal capitalism to self-managed socialism when the public housing owned by the state was introduced to practice. A series of exhibitions called Family and Household10 held in Zagreb became a means of educating people on how to furnish an apartment in a functional, inexpensive, and modern way. Thus the exhibitions transformed its role from the subversive critical platform, to the vehicle of the new ideology and a supporting mechanism of the newly established housing policy. The paper highlighted housing exhibitions held 20 years apart and representing two entirely different realities: one of lodges deprived of basic infrastructure – which continued to exist but were largely ignored after the WW2 – and another of the new standards of modernist living, still unavailable to the majority of the population.

housing exhibitions in 1930's and 1950's; Association of Artists Zemlja exhibitions; Family and Household Exhibitions

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