This community art project lasting 20 years started as an idea of festival dedicated to building, then transformed in advocacy of communal and common heritage, inviting artists, architects, writers and creators to act as House Council proposing an ideas of how to restore the building. Boris Bakal and Shadow Casters did not saved the world, EU, or Croatia, but while working with local community in Zagreb restored one condominium building block – modernistic architectural master-peace.
National
Croatia
ZAGREB, RIJEKA, DUBROVNIK, SPLIT
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2018-06-30
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Bacači Sjenki (Shadow Casters) Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Boris Last name of representative: BAKAL Gender: Male Nationality: Croatia Function: Artistic director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Bosanska 10 Town: ZAGREB Postal code: 10000 Country: Croatia Direct Tel:+385 98 165 8186 E-mail:katedrala@priest.com Website:http://www.bacaci-sjenki.hr
‘Man is Space: Vitic´ Dances’ is a multiyear community art project in a 10-story condominium building in Zagreb, Croatia. Built by the architect Ivo Vitic´, the building, considered a masterpiece of modern architecture and registered as a national monument (since 2005), was in a deteriorated state that threatened the lives of its 256 inhabitants and passer-by. The project started in 2003 when Croatian artist Boris Bakal (and his artistic company - Shadow Casters) moved into the building and became deeply acquainted with its history, its tenants, and their everyday hardship. The artist aimed to raise the awareness of the tenants and local community to restore this iconic building through a complex interdisciplinary endeavor that combined permanent artistic and social interventions and programs in and around the building. This ‘artivism’ project re-created and socialized a commonly shared space through intensive artistic presence by unifying tenants to collaborate for its preservation. It allows us to move away from a notion of the building as a whole to a notion of the building as multiplicity, from the study of the urban neighborhood to the study of urban choreographies of architecture. Vitic´ Dances has also secured funds to restore the building’s facade and record/create a documentary film about this project and the building. Indeed, restoration started in February 2016 and constitutes a significant investment, funded partly by the City of Zagreb, in residential housing in Croatia, since the II World War. It was finished in May 2018, and the feature documentary film by Boris Bakal, following the whole process of activating and changing the local community, will have a world premiere in Zagreb at the international festival ZGDOX on March 26, 2023.
Vitić Dances (movie): https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/783984466/
Psw: Vitic23Plese
Togetherness
Intangible
Heritage
Communal
Participation
Concept/Strategy:
Establishing community art project through sustainable strategies (methodologies and principles ) of preservation and renovation of modernist residential architecture
Communication:
Empowering co-owners / inhabitants of their rights, partnership, and management possibilities
Artistic documentation:
Filming all the critical events of the project ( audio archives, foto archives, document and blueprints archives of the building)
Publishing/dissemination:
Distribution of the film and publications and organizing workshops and experts symposiums on the case of this project and similar ones
The building we restored by meeting energetic efficiency requirements and from level G became level C of energetic sustainability and saving energy.
By constantly working with the co-owners, we avoided more extensive gentrification of this building and its neighborhood too.
*Concept/Strategy:
Advocating the values, benefits and responsibilities of co-owning a modernist residential building.
*Communication:
Raising owners’ awareness on the qualities of life based on respecting and cultivating the positive emotions toward the aesthetics of their house.
*Documentation:
Practicing community organization of cultural events and documenting the experiences in the A/V media.
*Publishing / dissemination:
Propagating examples of good practice through added value
These objectives are being attained through the following:
Creating models of private/public partnership through valuing houses of cultural heritage. Seeking city partnership in renewing the infrastructure, access spaces, elevators, public co-funding of works, educating owners in cooperative models of house management, and projecting affordable and sustainable maintenance fees. This project is a precedent of such a coordinated, good-practice production.
The cooperative model of single multi-apartment house management is a developmental laboratory of know-how empowering citizens toward assuming active and responsible roles toward their property, not only their apartments but also co-owned shared spaces of the house (lobbies, galleries, elevators, aisles, staircases, terraces, etc.). The co-owners / citizens' or inhabitants slowly developed their specific involvement in the project. Practically speaking, the value of their apartments after the renovation of the building was doubled. The impact is a universal role model of positive practice in this field.
Other co-owners in other houses all over Zagreb and Croatia followed the experience and pathway we have created, the models of co-financing were copied, and many NGOs in the field used the methodology as very efficient in similar problems in transformation or renovation of the buildings and condominiums.
First, we hired artists to create guidelines through the sessions of the Extended House Council on how to improve coexistence in the building and preserve and restore the building. To achieve these guidelines and coexistence, we implemented a cultural program that added value to the building. By creating an archive of the building and a museum of its memories, we gave visibility to every moment in its history and, the people in the building, the importance of being. At the same time, we hired external experts to support the renovation process and implement the application for donor and foundation funds from which the building would be renovated. By studying the building construction process, we directed the experts toward the most efficient renovation of the building. When the money for the renovation was received, we gathered domestic and foreign experts to discuss how to spend that money in the best possible way. During the renovation, we documented the entire process and collaborated with the experts who worked on it. In parallel with the renovation, we promoted this building renovation process, this individual building, and the entire oeuvre of the architect Ivan Vitić all over the world, thus including in the process professors and students of various faculties, experts in the field of protection and restoration of cultural monuments, and encouraged legal changes in the Republic of Croatia and abroad through constant presence at expert meetings and symposia and by advocating the method we applied to this case - all over the world.
During the whole project we worked with other NGOs on this project and helping similar projects in other areas, cities or countries. In each of this cases we also worked with lokal comunites as we did in the Vitić Dances project.
Throughout the project, we have involved experts from any possible field to elaborate the project from as many potential points of view as possible.
Communicology:
- open offices
- galleries of problems
- bulletin boards (wall newspapers)
- lectures
- management workshops
Performing arts:
- in-house concerts of classical music targeted at raising the public visibility of the project, the house, and its citizens with their house-related problems
- in-house participatory theater events simulating the meetings of house councils around relevant problems
- urban culture workshops
Urbanism and architecture symposia:
- recollecting international urban residential architecture construction, preservation and management positive practice. Appointing thematic workgroups. Sharing relevant experience. Publications.
Cross-interaction among experts in these fields and interaction of workgroup members with the inhabitants through in-house and public events organized by the project team is our method of educating and empowering citizens.
The self-explanatory result is the renovation of the Zagreb landmark building and its public and social impact. It was the highest-funded public housing renovation project in Croatia since WWII.
Yet another project achievement is the documentary film “Vitić dances”, which is being finalized for distribution. It objectively shows the principal chapters of the long-term project implementation, from its inception to completion.
The direct beneficiaries benefit from increased quality of life in all aspects, as individuals, families, communities, neighborhoods, and districts.
The indirect beneficiaries are all the resident's communities who learn about project results.
The broader cultural community benefited from the project because the works of socialist modernism began to be seen as cultural values that should be protected, restored, and maintained and later promoted as important architectural works.
With the renovation of the building, Croatia received a completely renovated cultural monument that it can be proud of internationally.
When we conceived this project in 2002, there was no project of such complexity and scope in Croatia and not even in the EU. By using artists and experts "as if" they were co-owners and tenants of the building, in the manner of Boal and his theater of the oppressed, we were rewarded twice: the results and conclusions of the meetings of that "extended house council" really created a map and route of possible changes in the building, but they also directly inspired the tenants and co-owners to establish an actual house council where they could legally and efficiently start changing the situation in the building. By bringing experts from abroad, architects, artists, and activists, who before every workshop or lecture at the Society of Architects, the Faculty of Architecture, or some cultural center in Zagreb, "had" to present their skills and achievements to the co-owners and tenants in the building itself (Shadow Casters and Boris Bakal turned one apartment into the main headquarter of the project), it created media hype and that added value that was necessary to get all tenants, city authorities, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the professional public to act.
By creating an archive of the building's memories - from photos of the co-owners in various phases of the building, growing up, changes in the neighborhood or the building - we discovered the forgotten common shared spaces of the building (roof, basement, etc.), we recalled moments of shared sharing and coexistence (moments that were suppressed and compromised by the war and political change in Croatia), made every part of the building equally essential and known, and attractive to the general public. By contextualizing those personal moments of the tenants with world history (art, architecture, politics), we put the co-owners and the building in the center of the world. We called this Human-Urban Dynamic Newtwork/ing.
As the project had several phases and transformed itself from the Community Art Project to the concrete restoration of the legality of the local co-ownership community to the actual restoration of the building, we can say that this project was methodologically heterogeneous and that through its implementation we learned how to adapt the method to the state of affairs.
First, we dealt with creating a community of tenants, then raising their awareness of the value of the building itself as a cultural monument, then we instructed them in their rights and obligations as co-owners. In parallel with that, we worked on introducing the building into the protection system as a cultural monument, then creating a positive and recognizable brand of Croatian culture throughout Croatia and abroad.
We created a community of tenants through intensive socializing at cultural and professional events in and around the building:
Open offices - in front of the building - where we conducted public inquiries about this building and about the renovation of buildings in general.
Then we organized concerts on the roof of the building, performances on neighboring buildings that could be watched from our block, and professional lectures in apartments or on the common terraces and balconies of the building.
Simultaneously with the work in the building, we organized professional meetings, workshops and exhibitions at the Croatian Society of Architects, the Faculty of Architecture, professional galleries and other cultural centers in Zagreb, Rijeka, Dubrovnik and Split.
We presented the project at numerous gatherings and events around the world and constantly informed the co-owners of the building and the media about it, and thus constantly put pressure on politicians and responsible experts to finally allow the renovation, start the process of professional protection and renovation and approve funds for the renovation. In the end, as can be seen from the attached materials, we succeeded.
During the project, we have done workshops in other cities and taught other local communities how they could use the same methodologies elsewhere. We made workshops and presentations on methodology in Croatia (Rijeka, Split, Dubrovnik), Slovenia (Ljubljana), Serbia (Belgrade, Pančevo, Kragujevac), Macedonia (Skopje, Bitola), Netherlands (Amsterdam, Leiden), Czech Republic (Prague), China (Hangzhoe), Australia (Sydney, Perth), USA (Columbia University/NY) Italy (Genova, Firenze/ICOMOS), Armenia (Yerevan), Cyprus (Limassol), etc.
Using the same process and methodology, we also helped a Macedonian group of artists and architects to start building a local community and make them aware of what they could do with one building block in Skopje - Railway Company building block. We are still working with them and proposing a local government law and pathway to restore the condominium buildings in Skopje, North Macedonia. (https://akto-fru.org/en/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B8/ibctif-buildings-could-talk/).
Our cities are most cities in which we will have to adapt to new usage, new societal dynamics, and new technological innovations. This project shows how, by finding a common goal in local communities, these changes could be approached, prepared, and executed with or without the help of the state or the wider community. It also shows how this network could be used for the common good and creates added value. We made a case in which one building, almost unknown to the broader society, became a landmark, became a brand, and was partly restored (staircase and elevators) only through the very clever scheme of financial aid from all the members of the larger community of inhabitants and co-owners of the building.
By showing and explaining this process of working and our methodology in other contexts, we have also shown how this method can face some other, maybe global problems and challenges elsewhere.
