Review article

The Workers' Residential Colony Planned in Solin in 1949

Dujmo Žižić ; Fakultet građevinarstva, arhitekture i geodezije Sveučilišta u Splitu
Ante Lalić ; Fakultet građevinarstva, arhitekture i geodezije Sveučilišta u Splitu

Abstract

In the year 1949 in the wider area of Solin, a central settlement for the purposes of the Dalmatian Cement and Cement Products Industry was planned. Besides the residential facilities for the workers and clerks of the factories in Sv. Kajo, Majdan, Vranjic and Kaštel Sućurac, planned was also construction of a cultural and administrative centre. The project
provided for constructing of 210 flats in four-flat houses and four more residential blocks to accommodate around two hundred single persons, all these to be constructed over five years.
The authors of the Project Design were aware of the relatively large distance between the planned settlement and the factory in Kaštel Sućurac, wherefore even the ruins of Salona were considered a possible location, that was eventually rejected because of endangering the archaeological site. The urban plan of the Solin Workers' Colony was prepared by the architect, Neven Šegvić, in 1949. He distributed standardised residential blocks loosely and uniformly between
the existing road and the newly planned road to Klis, on 18 hectares of area of the Roman Salona and the modern town of Solin. The approach applied by Šegvić, one of the leading Croatian 20th century architects, testifies to the social needs and circumstances rather than the designer's skills.
The ungrateful task of architectural interpretation of the project was undertaken by the architect, Fabijan Kaliterna, of the Construction-Designing Office for Dalmatia. In April 1949 he produced designs for four standard types of buildings – Types I, II, III and IV, applying
therein the traditional architectural vocabulary. In each of the rational, expressively calm two-storey volumes, Kaliterna housed four flats around a central staircase. The building types differ from each other by flat sizes. The workers' colony project in Solin has never been implemented. The chronology of the difficulties that accompanied the project provides insight into the key protagonists and their motives in large spatial interventions of the powerful cement industry in this
archaeologically sensitive environment. Also clearer are made the planning and designing decisions that, outside the context, could have been easily proclaimed questionable.

Keywords

Salona; Solin; Dalmatia; cement and cement products industry; factory settlement; Workers' Colony; architect Neven Šegvić; architect Fabijan Kaliterna

Hrčak ID:

148908

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/148908

Publication date:

8.9.2015.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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