1989

Back to Future - Architecture of Nineties

Guests: 
Ana Popelka, Elisabeth Steiner, Florian Riegler, Roger Riewe, Isabel Bachs Bertran, Jose Colomer Prat, Marcel W. Musch, Ben Schullenberg, Ivan Čižmek, Darja Hlavka, Lada Hršak, Žana Jakopčić, Vinko Penezić, Darja Radović Saša Randić, Krešimir Rogina i Feđa Vukić 
 
Time: 
August 1989 

A group of architects and art historians from Zagreb, conscious members of McLuhan's global village, striving for real (spiritual) integration into the European (and broader) cultural space - initiated the First International Symposium for Theory and Design in the Third Machine Era - Back to the Future. The symposium was organized by the Croatian Musical Youth with the help of the Republican Conference of the Croatian Socialist Youth Association, and was held in Grožnjan in August 1989. 

Behind the seemingly ossified and stereotyped form (symposium) hid a casual gathering of about twenty experts mostly architects from several European countries. In witty lectures (everyone gave at least one) and democratic discussions, opinions were opposed not only about tendencies in contemporary architecture and design, but also about other aspects of culture and life in the post-industrial era. The participants based their theoretical reflections on the optimism of futurism, the childhood of contemporary culture, and the ambivalence of the pop movement of the sixties, which is both the concluding phase of modernism and the paradigm of the postmodern worldview. Dr. Nigel Whiteley and Cedric Price enriched the Symposium's proceedings with textual contributions. 

The symposium was conceived as a tribute to the future historian Reyner Banham, one of the most important theorists of architecture and mass culture of the 20th century. Adhering to his thesis about the necessity of conceptual reflection, which precedes the design process, the theoretical part of the symposium was concretized by practical work on the task of this year's Shinkenchiku competition with the theme of Disprogamming.  

The final result, the conceptual work City of Turtles, analyzing the typology of the Mediterranean city and the changeability/adaptability of the modern 24-hour information world, provides a future projection of Istrian towns. 

cip-1989-440-441-1
Grožnjan Summer School of Architecture

JMI CENTRE GROŽNJAN 
Umberta Gorjana 2, 52429 Grožnjan, Croatia
groznjanschoolofarchitecture@gmail.com

gssa-sponzori-footer