Roundtable Conference with Vera Grimmer, Tadej Glazar, Maroje Mrduljas

Croatian architecture has drawn a certain amount of international attention during the last years during which process recent individual realizations, ever more present in the architectural media, are most exposed. Despite this interest, modern Croatian architecture is not part of the dominant discourse of world architectural history; it is rather unknown, and its cultural status has just began to be outlined through new critical interpretations of a marginal, but pregnant and specific environment. Its position on the border between 'the East' and 'the West' has enabled a certain assimilation and exchange of knowledge and experience with international centres, but also led to significant, sometimes anxious efforts by the whole of Croatian culture to form its own authenticity. Therefore Croatian architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries is characterized by a motivating tension between reinterpretation of international models and endeavours to continue building a local, but open cultural identity. Here, Croatian architecture has made a significant modernization contribution to social reality and it deserves attention as a practice that has succeeded in synchronizing the conceptual integrity of the discipline with the given turbulent socio-political conditions and substantial oscillations of available economic and technical resources.
The Exhibition and the Conference presented at the University of Liechtenstein will show and discuss on this features and positions.