ZKL - Zagreb Puppet Theater

architect Nenad Kondža
project ZKL - Zagreb Puppet Theater, Zagreb, Croatia
written by Damir Mioč

 

The Lower Town block framed by the squares of Tomislavov Trg and Starčevićev Trg and the streets of Ulica Baruna Trenka and Gajeva Ulica has recently seen the enlargement and reconstruction of the building of ZKL – the ZAGREB PUPPET THEATER.

 

 

The renovation of the theater building started in Autumn 1998. The architect Nenad Kondža, together with the Czech architect, set designer and director Miroslav Melena, the planner of the stage and audience areas, designed the theater.

 

The old stage, with little depth and no stage elevator, and the small auditorium without an incline often restricted the imagination and needs of authors and performers. The stage had to be enlarged, the auditorium adapted.

 

The ZKL Theater is a geometry of volumes. The new edifice is a functional/structural compound of three older buildings. It is divided into three dilatations of different structural solutions. Solutions were adapted to the building technologies depending on restricted access possibilities for construction machines; that is why the fire escape is made of concrete, while the small hall has a steel structure.