A Word from the Editor

By publishing the Ivan Vitić monographic issue of the journal Arhitektura,
the Croatian Architects Associaton has not only realised one of its cultural
obligations, but has also fulfilled the frequently expressed demand
for a publication about the creator of such important and mighty buildings
as the Laginjina-Vojnovićeva Street Residential Complex in Zagreb
(where the renovation has come almost too late), the Military Centre
(converted into the City Library) in Šibenik, the Military Centre (now devastated ruin) in Komiža or Pavilion 40 at the Zagreb Fair (today neglected
and altered in appearance by an extension). These four projects, which
could and should find their place in every relevant survey of European architecture of the 1950s and 1960s, represent the peaks of a life achievement rich with projects and realisations – intensive and consistent, autoreferential and innovative.
Vitić’s contemporary, Neven Šegvić, also one of the outstanding personages
in Croatian architecture of the fifties and sixties, wrote in his especially
inspired obituary in 1987: “To write about the work of architect
Vitić analytically would be teacher’s pedantry, serving the confirmation
of the writer and leaving the figure of Ivan Vitić out of the limelight that
he deserves”. And later on in the same text: “It is not necessary to make
a scholarly classification of Vitić; his personality and architecture should
be just loved”. However, twenty years later, our approach to Vitić’s work
must necessarily pass through the filter of theoretical and real events
through which architecture has gone in the meantime, and they have
been neither minor nor insignificant. Therefore, the authors of this monograph take the current moment and today’s positions as their starting
point, although they prevailingly use comparative analysis. This monograph
does not have the ambition of being the ultimate document or
chronicle; in that sense does not aim to be “objective”.
However, we still hope that these texts will not present themselves
as “the confirmation of the writer”, because the authors have used their
knowledge and inventiveness in order to evaluate a work that crossed
the boundaries of its time and environment in the best way they could.
This monographic issue of Arhitektura would have not been possible
without the material in the possession of the Croatian Museum of
Architecture, for which we express our commendation and gratitude.
We are also thankful to the architect Aleksander Laslo for his invaluable
contributions from his own archive and from the archive of the Vitić family.
The original photographs by Damir Fabijanić are a very important factor
of this monograph. Considering the current condition of several key
buildings, taking the photographs was anything but easy. The starting
point of our work is certainly also the invaluable project by the Faculty of
Architecture in Zagreb: the Architectural Atlas of the Republic of Croatia
– 20th Century, Tentative Monograph Ivan Vitić, 1992, by the authors
Andrej Uchytil and Arijana Štulhofer. If this monograph manages to encourage further research into such an important life’s work as Vitić’s, its
purpose will already be fulfilled.



Contents

A Word from the Editor
Questions about the Work of Ivan Vitić - Friedrich Achleitner
Ivan Vitić: a Solo Architect in a Collectivist Environment - Aleksander Laslo
Context, Play, and Sign 1958. – 1962.
Residential Building, Laginjina Street 7-9, Zagreb, 1958 – 1962
A House For Better Times - Lenko Pleština
Interpretations of the Regional Context - Tadej Glažar
Ivan Vitić, Residental Blocks 1 and 2, Vis, Island of Vis
Archetype and Polygon for Innovations - Tadej Glažar
Ivan Vitić, Culture Centre Komiža, Island of Vis, 1961
A Radical Dialogue - Vera Grimmer
The Military Culture Centre in Šibenik, 1960/61
Vitić's Motels – Trieste, Umag, Rijeka, - Tomislav Pavelić
Sinergy with the Landscape - Tomislav Odak
The Youth City, 1948
The Construction of Pavilion No. 40 at the Zagreb Fair - Ivo Podhorsky
The Cube Maroje Mrduljaš
Projects and Realisations 1941 – 1986
Ivan Vitić, biography
Text authors' biographies
Bibliography