Fragment of Urban Quality

project Bowling Alley, Zaprešić, Croatia
authors Marko Cvjetko, Miron Hržina
architectural office AG PLANUM

 

If we perceived the world around us as specific biotopes, we could say that urban structures are alive as well. There must be a secret vessel that connects different houses into a community, communities into settlements and settlements into cities. There must be some underground or other types of impulses that reveal the circumstances on the terrain, which stimulate the inorganic matter to change or grow in order to adjust to the environment. The idea that houses have their own independent lives might make us imagine what would happen if the cities started to develop as they wanted, if the houses defined the way we are and not vice versa. Would they be small, with a large garden or large, monumental, grandiose and visible from afar? I do not doubt that places and cities would be much more humane. It seems that everything around us attests that the nature of survival lies in mutual help and networking and that only a happy environment – whether it be a natural habitat or urban agglomeration – guarantees happiness and prosperity