Transition: Architects as Managers of Change
Transition in a social sense is a change from one system into another.
Globally, the modernist paradigm changed to the post-modern with the disappearance of central authorities, universal dogmas and foundational ethics. The post-modern world introduced fragmentation, instability,
indeterminacy and insecurity. Architectural responses to these conditions occurred as a semantic nightmare of the post-modern discourse and/or the attempted completion of the modern project.
Locally, in Croatia, transition occurred as a quantum leap from the Socialist, one-party, state-controlled market system, into a capitalist, parliamentary democratic, ...view middle of the document...
The architect was no longer a gentleman with bow-tie and cigar waiting for a patron to develop canonical national institutions of historical importance.
Randic-Turato are able to anticipate and transform this transitional atmosphere. An Architecture of Transition is a way of intervening in the new market conditions where the role assignments are no longer grounded in the established state-regulated economy. The architect becomes an extra, a free-lance actor without a previously assigned role, without a script.
Randic-Turato are transitional architects who have fully understood and accepted these realities without ontological disturbances and professional nostalgia. In the free, non-regulated market, they use even the slightest opportunity for activity. Their work is widening the traditional field of the architectural profession, whereby Randic-Turato have become dynamic managers of change.
Border Conditions
The city of Rijeka represents the historical and conceptual background of Randic-Turato. Historically, geographically and conceptually, the city of Rijeka represents a border condition between sea and land, east and west, order and chaos, province and centre and the horizontality of its sea and the verticality of its mountains. Rijeka is a harbour city, where the port and its industry represent the urban more significantly than the morphological organization of the city centre. Rijekas skyline is dominated by the silhouette of numerous harbour cranes and social housing skyscrapers -- function and pragmatism dictates city form.
Sasa Randic (1964) and Idis Turato (1965) were both born in Susak, the eastern quarter of Rijeka. Both come from architectural families, whereas Randics father is an urban planner and Turatos father is an architect and grandfather was a builder. They completed primary and secondary school in Rijeka and studied architecture in Zagreb from mid-1980s to beginning of 1990s. Their education at the rchitecture Faculty at University of Zagreb further attests to the particular context upon which their foundation rests.
The University of Zagreb never accepted post-modernism as a dominate direction: quite contrary, it sought the completion of the modern movement.
Education was based upon the concepts of the modernist tradition of the 1930s, when the so-called Zagreb School was an active part of the European
Modernist scheme. During the 1980s, for example, students and professors would carefully study the work of Cedric Price rather than that of nearby Aldo Rossi. Paolo Portughesis 1979 Venice Biennale, which showcased the early work of OMA, was congruent to the sensibilities of the Zagreb students.
A New Modus Operandi
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Sasa Randic, similar to many other excellent students of his generation, not only received the solid grounding of the faculty, but also educated himself by an insatiable curiosity of the contemporary international architecture scene. In his exchange with the world, he was awarded...
