hrvatski

Dvije "polovice" Novog Zagreba

The right bank of the Sava river has been transformed, since the beginning of the last century, from an ever-changing and unhospitable flood plain to a vital locus of the explosive expansion of post-WWII Zagreb. The fear and intolerance of the unstable river and it's frequent and devastating floods have shaped generations that have drawn, surveyed, excavated and channeled the course of the river forever fixing the historic flux into the current arc of the flood preventing corridor that traverses the city. The heroic 'crossing' of the river and the construction of a modernist 'New Zagreb' benefited from the pacification of the river that opened a huge expanse of easily obtainable land for the pressing needs of an expanding city. The planners saw an empty, cartesian space to colonise with the scattered remains of alluvial topographies as mere obstacles that were to be straightened, filled in and built over. The richness of centuries of natural flows as deposited on the surface of the plain was being erased and supplemented with a succession of ever developing urban schemes. Careful tracings of the remaining natural features such us dried-up canals, linear groupings of trees, segments of historical routes or the remnants of cadastral maps reveal a fragmentary presence of previous natural geometries. Simultaneously an overview of abandoned planning concepts including attempts of locally reconstructing former water features or even proposals of redrawing the rigid line of the river in imagining an archipelago that evokes the former complexity, however dangerous, of the relationship of the city to its river offers valuable insights into the dormant narrative and creative potential of this landscape. The combination of archival research along with the gaze 'beneath' and 'around' the existing strata reveals a wealth of sedimented spatial history and ways of interpreting it.

Novi Zagreb, rijeka Sava, transformacija teritorija

nije evidentirano