ZAGREB / MARTINOVKA / UNIVERSITY STRIP

During their professional internship, students Ana Maria Pacetti and Marios Tsangaris immersed themselves in the history of the contemporary urban development of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia with around 800,000 inhabitants. With a keen sense, they explored the contemporary socio-economic and urbanistic constellations of various municipal districts, neighborhoods, and suburbs, gaining an intimate insight into the broader metropolitan framework of Zagreb County with a population of approximately 1,000,000 inhabitants—constituting about a quarter of the total population of Croatia.

This experience enabled them not only to understand urban morphology in transition but also to focus on the Martinovka city district, located between the old city core and the floodplain of the Sava River. These areas not only represent key physical and natural elements of Zagreb but also embody paradigmatic aspects of its conception.

In particular, the subject of study is the current state of urban morphology around the University Avenue in Martinovka, an unfinished urban concept that began implementation in the early 1960s and is now under threat of disappearance due to the conditions of contemporary post-industrial urban planning and management, susceptible to the dominance of real estate market forces.

Development of methodologies:

The case study research unfolds through several phases:

(1) As part of continuous research in line with the annual programs of SF:ius and its partners, developing ideas and conceptualizing approaches to space as experienced at different levels of engagement. These will be transformed into publications showcasing the results of research on the urban form of the studied area, as well as the methodologies used and proposed for further investigation.

(2) Through collaborative learning activities in which new approaches are developed by applying our methods to other interesting locations.

(3) Together with student internships, where fresh ideas and perspectives come from individual researchers who bring with them different experiences and approaches to addressing issues of urban form in a new and unfamiliar environment. To be informed and grasp the sense of space and its prospects, students conduct interviews with local users and stakeholders (from faculty members to representatives of the local municipality), work in the field, and actively experience the space crucial for understanding its urban form.

With this case study, our aim is to develop and harmonize new methodologies and approaches to urban studies with an emphasis on involving the local community, fostering dialogue, and embracing experimental research attitudes focused on locality, sociality, and urbanity as parts of everyday experience in a specific area. On one hand, the production of materials in various forms should showcase the issues, methodologies, and perspectives through which local concerns can be addressed, focused, and/or resolved by the community. The produced materials also offer/suggest a common framework for the exchange of languages, ideas, and concepts between experts and the community. This also pertains to improving dialogue between academic approaches (focused on perceiving and describing issues) and architectural practice (focused on designing and implementing solutions). The case study research aims to fill the invisible gap in understanding the real issues of urban planning and architectural design as they emerge in the everyday life of the community within their own routines and spatial practices. On the other hand, the project also proposes various conceptual solutions that will utilize artistic and creative approaches to communication and dissemination of ideas for and within the community. The overall outcome should be viewed as a comprehensive set of documents showcasing findings in several areas of abstraction: experiencing urbanity on the ground, the urban form of the municipality, conceptualizing issues and perspectives for issue resolution, and refining and developing methodologies for further implementation.

As the main activity of the professional practice, collaboration on the development of multidisciplinary methods for teaching urban field research involved studying theoretical content rooted in the Situationist International movement and elements constituting Unitary Urbanism (dérive - détournement - psychogeography); testing four modules of teaching activities in the neighborhood of Martinovka and the municipality of Trnje, located on the edge of "old" and modern Zagreb; setting up individual research perspectives and mapping using theoretical inputs in the perceptual practice of sensory fieldwork; devising reflexive hypotheses on the topic; and creating individual reports for the SF:ius website and a fanzine to be printed and distributed in several socially and culturally intense locations in the research area. The task was completed both as individual work by each of the interns (architecture students Ana Maria Pacetti and Marios Tsangaris) and as teamwork under the mentorship of SF:ius staff (architect and urban planner Dafne Berc; project coordinator, philosopher, and communication expert Layla Munitić; and SF:ius president, philosopher, and art historian Dario Vuger).