Review article
https://doi.org/10.17018/portal.2015.13
Building and Renovations of the Art Pavilion in Zagreb
Mladen Perušić
Abstract
The Art Pavilion was entered in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia
due to it being a preserved free–standing building on a square within the Green Horseshoe. It was built in 1896 for the 1898 Millennial Exhibition in Budapest as a building with a central layout, a dome and side wings, that is lit from above according to the contemporary European standards for this type of building. The project selected at the competition was that of Hungarian architects Floris Korb and Kalman Giergl. The Tripartite Kingdom decreed that the steel structure manufactured by the Danubius company be transferred to Zagreb to form the core of the Art Pavilion. The location for the City House of the Arts was chosen while anticipating the city’s expansion and it was decided that such a prominent location requires imposing architecture, so the project of reconstruction was entrusted to Viennese architects Fellner and Helmer and the construction work to the Zagreb company Higsberg & Deutsch. Due to the difference in ground levels, the building was constructed in two storeys, with the upper story housing the exhibition space, while the lower story was to be used as a restaurant and cafe. The Pavilion was opened on December 15th 1898 with the exhibition of the Croatian Salon of the Arts Society. In the course of one hundred years of building alterations, the Pavilion has lost some of its original appearance, mostly notably in 1938 when a radical purification was carried out due to the building’s poor condition and the contemporary view of historicist architecture, seeing portions of the architectural sculpture removed, such as turrets next to the dome, urns at the roofs’ edges, acroterions, cornices with the coats of arms of the Tripartite Kingdom, masquerons in keystones of the niches, hermae and the bust of Athena above the entrance, etc. The next major renovation in 1986 saw only construction
craft work carried out.
The recent comprehensive renovation of the Art Pavilion, a symbol of Zagreb, got under way in 2006. The poor
condition of the building, the roofs, the dome and the facdes with only a portion of their decorations left, was a pale image of the original imposing architecture. After compiling archival records, projects, and bibliography, as well as historical and the most recent photo documentation, the conservators drew up guidelines and a cost estimate for the renovation to be done by way of restoring the building to its original state, as it was established that there were enough elements to do so. The City of Zagreb, as the Art Pavilion’s owner and as investor, enlisted the renovation in the programme of monument annuity. The sector for communal buildings of the City Office for Construction organized the renovation in several phases: in 2006 the lighting of the exhibition space and the glass roofs over the halls were installed, from 2007 to 2011 the dome and all the fa軋des were renovated, and before 2013 the construction and installation improvement inside the building was completed and architectural sculpture set up. The most complex procedure was the removal of the metal sheets on shorter sides of the octagonal dome transported from Budapest and the installation of glass as designed in the project of Fellner and Helmer. A special attention was put to the conservation work carried out in four sets: the elements restored in situ, those which were dismantled and renovated in the workshop – mostly from zinc–plated metal sheets, the fabrication of new ones after the existing samples in portions where they were missing, and the re–creation of those removed in 1938 after old plans and photographs. The conservation work was concluded with the installation of the reconstructed entrance portal with hermae and the bust of Athena, protectress of arts and crafts. The comprehensive renovation of the Art Pavilion exterior was completed in 2013 according to the concept of restitution of the original 1898 situation. This was opted for as the imposing building occupies a prominent location within the Zagreb Green Horseshoe and the city traffic circulation, and was possible because of the sufficient data available.
Given the recent conservation, this article aims to outline the historical phases of the Pavilion and their valorization that served as basis for the presentation proposed. It reveals the so far unknown information and details, providing an architectural analysis of the building, its geometry and structure, based on archival and conservation research and the renovation performed, whereby a model of presentation chosen was that of the last live layer which is also the first, and where the interventions applied entailed conservation of the original object in situ.
Keywords
Art Pavilion in Zagreb; construction; building alterations; recent renovation
Hrčak ID:
149930
URI
Publication date:
21.12.2015.
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