reakcija i osvrt

ArchDaily objavljuje projekte nelegalnog natječaja za "Zagrebački Manhattan"

Autor/izvor: DAZ 26/06/2019

Dear colleagues from ArchDaily,

The initiative to call upon this matter has been the recent article on ArchDaily website showcasing the finalist work from Superspace for the Zagreb Observation tower competition. We would very much appreciate it if you would publish this letter as a whole document since it is an explicit portrait of a topic we are addressing.

In light of recent local realities which our city of Zagreb is facing, we as local and national professional bodies: Zagreb Society of Architects, Association of Croatian Urban Planners, Croatian Chamber of Architects, University of Zagreb Faculty of Architecture and Croatian Association of Landscape Architects, would like to open up a general discussion regarding the possible negative scenarios that might be reoccurring in other places as well, so please take this as a valuable insight. The initiative to call upon this matter has been the recent article on ArchDaily website showcasing the finalist work from Superspace for the Zagreb Observation tower competition.

First, we would like to compliment the effort of all the competitors, who took the time and the effort to provide the ideas and give the fresh view on the topic. But, unfortunately, what the competitors have not been initiated into, are the severe irregularities emerging from the local settings and the competition organizer who has initiated the competition and the call for the entries.

We would like to appeal to the professional communities on local and international levels to try to be more careful in professionally evaluating the quality of the calls for competitions, the suspectable project briefs as well as the background of competition organizers, even the suspectable short deadlines which are disputing the maturity of the approach to getting acquainted with the complexity of the site specifics and delivering a quality proposal. To elaborate this specific situation and make things more comprehensible, the call for entries as well as the competition brief have been put to motion severely disregarding Croatian laws regulating the built environment and city planning regulative plans, deliberately disengaging and avoiding the representatives of local and national professional bodies (Zagreb Society of Architects, Association of Croatian Urban Planners, Croatian Chamber of Architects, University of Zagreb Faculty of Architecture, Croatian Association of Landscape Architects), as well as general public opinion.

Sava park (Savski perivoj): Master regulation plan for the City of Zagreb, 1937. (from: Radović Mahečić; Štok, 1997:26; Study of PPGZ, AF ZGB 2019)

Since it is a location of a very specific value for the city of Zagreb, specific protocols are required by law and professional procedures which both should serve the general public in ensuring the most professional and democratic solution to which they, as the citizens and as such the owners of the public spaces, are constitutionally entitled to. Unfortunately, the specific value and potential of the location has made both the location and the regulative protocols as well as the public opinion, the victims of ambition to merchandise the public space into shady deals and trades.

Just a few of the facts, among many that are in motion, that are breaching the regulations are:

1. The competition site is owned by a City municipality, and is categorised as a valuable green belt by the Sava river, allowing only a very specifically defined developing program, mainly as an outdoor recreational area, a public green space area, all under propositions of a local general urban plan, which definitely does not have an option to build a building or an infrastructure that the competition brief was calling for.
2. Competition was organized, put into motion and published by a foreign private developers company (EX-development, UAE – Dubai based) without any mention of an involvement of a local partner or the legal land owner of the competition site location.
   When being brought to dispute by the City General Assembly to make a clear statement on whether there has been any initiative by the city authorities for putting such a competition into motion, the Mayor of Zagreb has issued a written statement saying that the City authorities did not initiate the competition.
   In City of Zagreb all major public architectural competitions are obliged to meet the regulatory standards which require the competition organizers to have the valid licence and each competition brief must be approved and allocated with a registration number by the Croatian Chamber of Architects. The EX-development has neither the above-mentioned licence nor have they obtained the approval and the registration number for the competition brief from the competent authority.
3. The competition has not been visible on the local level for the local professional community to engage in evaluation, or the general public to be informed about what is being proposed for their community development.