Less is More... Difficult

architect Vedrana Ergić
project Karibu - Fashion Atelier, Zagreb, Croatia
written by Helena Sterpin

 

A walk down the street most often boils down to looking at the surrounding buildings’ ground floors, whether in the centre of some world metropolis or in a suburban populated area. The barrier separating the urban space from a building’s interior has been reduced to a transparent or porous membrane, with the purpose of attracting and seducing the viewer. The urban space has slipped into ground floors, occupied city blocks’ courtyards, has changed the city layout by having created a sponge-like structure above which hover the activities that belong to the individual and intimacy. If interior space belongs to the body and the exterior to the social order, as Loos claimed, that borderline is today confined to a height of approximately 4 m above the ground. With an increase in the number of activities requiring direct contact with the urban space and its users, the competition for recognisability and attention grows.