Editors’ Foreword to the 30th Anniversary Volume
This year, 2022, marks the 30th anniversary of the scholarly journal PROSTOR.
We are pleased to be the current editors, reaching this significant milestone for the journal, so we can write this Foreword and highlight some of the journal’s achievements and the 30th "birthday extras" we have organized for its special year. In noting that some of us are only the latest in a long line of Editors, we are delighted to point out that our executive editor prof. Ariana Štulhofer, Ph.D. is celebrating 20 years of her work in the journal!
We have invited members of the previous and present journal’s Editorial Board to select one paper from PROSTOR’s archive, which reflects not only personal favorites but also key moments and ‘turns’ in the discipline. The selected articles can be accessed on the journal’s website (OJS).
PROSTOR continues to thrive in its third decade. Over the years we have published 63 issues with more than one thousand papers! We have written about the history of our journal on some previous occasions - on the 20th anniversary (in issue 44,) and recently to mark the jubilee of the 60th volume. We now have around 400 scientists registered in our database and they deserve credit for building up the profile of the journal PROSTOR. An enormous effort has been made to make PROSTOR a high-quality journal it is today.
I conclude my Editorial with words of gratitude to all members of our editorial board, authors, reviewers, and readers, who have supported the Journal throughout the years. Working on the Journal is a team effort, and I have the honor to collaborate with a dedicated and enthusiastic group of colleagues.
With best wishes for a fruitful 2023 to the entire PROSTOR’s community,
Assoc. prof. Ana Mrđa, Ph.D. MBA
Editor-in-chief
Selected articles
Marinović-Uzelac, A. (1993). 'Town-planning in new conditions', Prostor, 1(1(1)), pp. 1-12.
Discussion on necessary social, economic and legislative reforms as conditions for managing land-politics in the democratic and to market oriented society. It deals as weIl with the characteristics of legal system as the condition for successful town-planning. Necessity of cancelling the conception of “social interest in favour of public interest”. Private property of building area is not the obstacle for the efficacy of town-planning. The necessity of introducing the town-planning legal instrument of commassation (reparcelling), so that urban plans can be realized without damaging land proprietors, and yet being profitable for the public interest. For the land usage parceIling is inevitable and “concession” is acceptable only exceptionally. Analysis showing how by the regulation measures of the urban plan, the land politics can be influenced in a more effective and legally better way than by the nationalization. Problems concerning the organization of the town-planning profession, pointing out the efficacy of private practice in comparison with the big institutes. Discussion on the causes of illegal building in the socialist countries.
The relationship between tourism and the natural environment is analyzed to find a suitable planning methodology for tourist regions. Flight from urban environment does not decrease the conflict of interests for landscape use and other outside activities. Indeed, it is aggravated by the utilization of the environment for the purposes of tourism. The contradiction between the primary motive of a rest in nature and landscape consumption in tourist regions demands studies in environmental protection. Criteria must be found to keep landscape use, i.e. construction, to a level that can be tolerated so that the gap between what is expected in a tourist region and what is found there decreases.
Juras, I. (1996). 'From the Regional to the Universal and Back', Prostor, 4(2(12)), pp. 201-218.
Since modern and post-modern architecture were international styles that neglected the genius loci, some architects wanted to define local identity by turning to the architectural heritage. This process came to stronger expression during the last 30 years during which regionalism was more or less successfully used. Sometimes it was expressed explicitly, at other times reflexively, until the appearance of deconstruction, which showed no interest in it at all.
Šerman, K. (1997). 'On Essences and Spaces - Behrens and Loos', Prostor, 5(2(14)), pp. 201-238.
This paper elaborates the tentatively posed thesis of a specific reciprocity between the perceived structure of the age and adequately constructed physical framework as its necessary, natural setting. It examines how architectural space responded to distinctive readings of the same complex socio-historical condition in the period of transition from the 19th to 20th century. The thesis is developed on the architectural and theoretical work of the two famous contemporaries - Peter Behrens and Adolf Loos.
Biondić, Lj. (1998). 'The Home as the Right to One's Own Milieu', Prostor, 6(1-2(15-16)), pp. 25-34.
The author uses a series of definitions to find the identity of the home today. Using various types of ground plans, she tries to discover how to solve the problem of the home as the shell of modern man and his family.
This paper gives an analysis of the occupants' attitudes to residential high-rise buildings. The analysis is based on a survey conducted among the occupants of high-rise buildings in Zagreb. A brief review of the time when these buildings were built is also given as well as positive and negative aspects of living in such buildings in relation to age group, family type and the opportunity to choose an apartment on upper floors.
Redevelopment of the almost entirely demolished historic nucleus of Zadar was finally defined in 1953 by the Competition for a master plan of Zadar organized by JAZU (today HAZU – Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences). The most prominent experts in architecture and cultural life of the period took part in defining the competition program and evaluating competition entries. The most important competition documents contained a comprehensive and detailed evaluation of the area and of the town's historical and urban development as well as the guidelines for future development of the town and its historic nucleus in particular. This paper presents the competition entries with urban-planning solutions and redevelopment proposals. The competition itself as well as the Plan for the historic nucleus resulting from it had a significant impact on further development of Zadar.
Marić, T., & Jakšić, N. (2011). 'Petrinjska Street in Zagreb', Prostor, 19(2(42)), pp. 322-335.
Petrinjska Street developed from an 18th century access road into a multilayered urban street with buildings designed by numerous esteemed architects. The street’s development marks the beginning of the wider urban growth of Zagreb and the first architectural projects. Discernible is a functional difference between the eastern side of the street with mostly residential buildings and its western side with public buildings.
Aleksandar Dragomanović produced a respectable oeuvre of approximately a hundred works of architecture of which his educational buildings (designed mostly in collaboration with R. Nikšić and E. Šmidihen) are generally regarded as fine examples of this typology. Between 1953 and 1977 he designed 15 kindergartens, schools, high schools and higher education buildings mostly in Zagreb and its surroundings with a few examples elsewhere in Croatia and former Yugoslavia. The examples of this typology are based on standardized modular concepts while their design shows inclinations towards structuralism and brutalism.
This text visits and manifests the critical utopianism embedded in the praxis of Peter Cook, within which resides a promising mode of architectural thinking based on reflexive inquiries rather than absolute and closed utopias. It aims to revert questions that link utopia and spatial determinism towards questions that revolve around utopian methodologies that become trainings of architectural imagination.
