What do we do? Can you sum it up in a sentence?

Zagreb. So much to say about this place – it’s urban-ness, its parks, even parking is worth a couple photos (so I'll stick a couple photos in). But what I find myself confused by and thinking about most often is my inability to describe/circumscribe my profession in this country. People don’t get it and I started to find myself confused. There are only 30 registered landscape architects in ALL of Croatia, if that helps you to understand why people don’t know what we do. The academic program is new at the University and began under the instruction of Slovenian landscape architects. I am not sure why it got its own designation in Slovenia but has only slowly and recently trickled into Croatia.

I had an interesting short conversation with a Croatian architect this week. He is a friend of my roommate and with one hand in the pocket of his black suit, after an explanation of what the “fancy” people in Zagreb do in their summers, he said that “landscape architecture” is shared between the Agriculture and Architecture departments at the University of Zagreb but “not respected by either”. At first I felt my feelings were a bit hurt. Then I felt as if I needed to explain, to defend my profession. I didn’t. I let the comment pass and thought about it the next day as I walked around the city.
(Smart Cars: created to make their own rules about parking in old town Zagreb - first image. Even though it's not an ideal solution, cars get squeezed into old town streets, two wheels up on the old sidewalk, their butt in the street. New Zagreb has taken care of this problem with oceans of parking sandwiched between the roads and the buildings - second image)



The designed environment is so obviously in your face all over European cities and Zagreb is no exception. But architects design buildings (and their plazas) and engineers design tram lines, according to the architect I talked to. Gardens are seen as frivolous here in Croatia because the recent war, the thousands of refugees and a depressed economy makes people worry about food and security. Parks were often designed hundreds of years ago on the property of rich land owners, often for their private use, appropriated by the public later on when the cities grew around them. One thing I want to point out though, is that Croatia has great “bones” for good public, open space even if it doesn’t have the money currently to keep it up. The plaza in front of the Zagreb Cathedral has much to be desired. It is essentially a concrete car turn-around sandwiched between a Baroque fountain and the impressive façade of the Cathedral. It hardly looks designed (although maybe at one point it was). The square in front of another notable church is used for parking for the Sabor (the Parliment). And Trg Ban Jelacica, the main square is a big and well used rectangular space full of people, trams and activity. In the center is an ostentatious statue of the Ban himself, on a horse. At least fits in scale to the huge space. Flanking him is a pitiful, modern-esque clock and a poorly placed, small, sunken fountain. The beautiful, tall, old buildings surrounding the square are covered in Zip and T-Mobil advertisements from the ground to floor 6. But in contrast to some of our most well-designed and thoughtfully designed spaces in the US that hardly get a lunch-time passerby, these places are hopping. In terms of the design of public space, whether someone did it on purpose or not, back in the day, they did it right.

(Ban Josip Jelacic Square - the statue and the advertisements show what was and what is important)


Now travel out to Novi Zagreb, the new part of town. You get all the crud that you get in the US – huge arterials filled with cars around (a somewhat uniquely Communist element) huge apartment buildings with clothes lines hanging out windows, parking surrounding them like a tree skirt and grafitti covering the ground floor. It reminded me of the plans that Corbusier had for a re-built Paris. This part of Zagreb felt sad. Of course, the war was a terrible thing for Croatia but this landscape of sullen buildings in a web of streets and parking lots made it seem like “landscape architecture” or at least what it could offer the people living in post-war Croatia may be a very un-frivolous endeavor.

In an office in Novi Zagreb I met the director of Oikon Ltd. and one of the few registered landscape architects, Hatec and Visna. Hatec, came to introduce himself and talk a bit about the COAST Project, the project off which I am hoping to work. Vis, my island of study, is part of COAST. Quickly Hatec began talking about the difference between American and Croatian perspectives on landscape architecture. It’s not about pretty gardens or even nice parks, he said. “We have had war in this century. You (Americans) have not, at least not on your own soil, since the Civil War”. He began analyzing the Civil War to make the point that during the Civil War, soldiers fought and died but it didn’t involved civilians and villages. I didn’t believe this to be completely correct but since he was on a roll, I didn’t stop him. My blood pressure did begin to rise, however. Then my internal psychologist reminded me that part of this process is being “that person”, the foreigner, and listening and understanding the point of view that comes out, provoked by people who are “not from here”. This is an important dynamic on Vis, an island steeped in "island syndrome", suspicion of foreigners and a desire to keep life as they know it, far from the grasps of those who aren't like them.

Hatec said that perpetual war has impoverished this country. The one-party government was a supervising and regulatory government. This role was not enabling and did not seek to grow knowledge but to contain what it felt was not correct and needed reigning-in or controlling. The government saw themselves as “bosses” not looking for active participation and partnership. This, as Hatec explained, was not a healthy process but an imposed one. Implementation occurred when the government went to University professors with ideas and asked them to back them up with their knowledge instead of education and discovery informing government creating progress. The process was backwards but that’s how it worked. After the Civil War comment and the shell I was ready to hold up to deflect the “you-just-don’t-get-it” comments, these points were salient.

How does this apply to Vis? In Croatia (said to compare it to the USA), “we care about what is old not what is new”. A conversation about the new-ness of American communities and an assumption that Americans love brand-spankin’ newness above all else that is holy, in contrast to the Croatian mentality began. I succinctly retorted that many Americans place great value in what is considered old, traditional and important to history. Our history may seem less “deep” (in age) than in Europe however it is no less revered (and in fact, just as old depending on the measure of it and the societies you are considering). The “newness” bug has more to do with the ability for expansion to happen so easily in the US. We had and still seem to have so much space… so we keep consuming it! I wanted to remind him that his office sat in “Novi Zagreb” (new Zagreb), that this bug exists in all humanity and if he wanted to see new towns that would turn your stomach, he should look in the old rice fields of Asia. But I held my tongue. Back to Vis…

Communism encouraged an industrial society which brought young people from their rural homes to industrial centers. It left old people in the villages and depopulated the islands. The “farmer was the enemy”, said Hatec. The idea of a farmer that owns his own parcels, equipment and animals was against the societal ideology. Socialism wanted to aggregate land parcels and in fact mandated that his happen. Unlike the Israeli kibutz, where people chose to farm as a community, the Communists enforced this notion. Vis didn’t have industry in the same way that the larger towns and cities did so its economy under Communism was different. The economy on Vis in the Communist years was based on a military relationship (I’m not sure what this means – did the military buy food from private farmers? Or was the island so militarized that agriculture hardly existed in those years?). There were 13 military installations on the island. Foreigners were not allowed. Tito even had his secret, private bunker on the island.

So the agricultural “memory” from the socialist (I am never sure whether to call it “socialism” or “communism”) period may not be contiguous from the older traditions. As people left the island and the pressure for arable land decreased, the terraces that were constructed on the slopes and in the more difficult areas were abandoned and people farmed the best land in the valleys. Consequently there are many old terraces overgrown with macchia and scrub growth. They grew primarily vines and some “mixed agriculture” for vegetable production.

Hatec wisely said that the key to ultimately creating meaningful places is to design the interaction between the urban and the wild. The question then is, “what is ‘wild’ on an island that has been manipulated for over 2000 years?. Like the island of Hvar and Stari Plain (an old agricultural plain from Roman times that has been continually farmed for ove 2400 years – amazing – and is now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site), perhaps it is not necessary to define a “period of significance” as we often do in the States. We are not restoring to the past but to a healthy dynamic. What is the healthy dynamic that can exist on Vis? That is the question.