The Cruiser

architects Branko Raos, Slavko Jelinek
written by Tomislav Odak

 

Pursuant to the order of the same investor – the Military Construction Department – three buildings of significant size were made in the same decade, typologically similar and at a high architectural level.

 

The deck access building made by Geršić (1950), standing on the corner of the streets of Držićeva and Vukovarska, seems to be taken from a functionalist/constructivist catalogue of the ‘30s (Baršć, Vladimirov, Ginsburg). Its simplicity and elegance attracts attention, but more from the passers-by and sightseers than from the inhabitants of the humble deck-access flats.

 

The complex deck-access building made by Galić in  Vukovarska Street (formerly Proleterskih Brigada,  Moskovska and Varaždinska), No. 35A, from 1953 (the year of the song "Ne daj se Ines..."), using Catalano’s flat modulation, Le Corbusier’s design principle and Galić’s strict and consistent interpretation of the whole and its details, has become a paradigm of collective housing building.