The Mimetic Meander

architects Studio Crta
project 032 House, Zagreb, Croatia
written by Dražen Juračić

 

The task of scholarly publications is to help architecture fulfil its own task, which is to articulate forms, spaces, and ambiences that are stimulating in terms of aestheticism, meaning, memory, identification, and identity. However, when writing about these cultural aspects, one should keep in mind that architecture serves above all a utilitarian purpose, especially when it has prosaic functions, which are also the most common: housing, education, healthcare, administration.

 

Before offering any phenomenological or semantic evaluation, one should establish whether the building meets the preconditions for fulfilling these cultural tasks. It should be usable, safe, solid, and durable, as well as – equally importantly – economical in order to start performing its sublime mission. Unusable, unsafe, uneconomical, and unpayable buildings will never come into a situation to emanate the representative, semantic, visual, symbolic, and other features characteristic of a work of architecture. Therefore, before considering the creative achievement of the Pantovčak row of houses, one should look at its prosaic, utilitarian features through the prism of common sense.