MODERNIST PURITY

Modernism is alive and well in Split, Croatia.  In fact, when you really start to look closely, the purity of the modernist buildings is unbelievable.

This realization came to us as we were on our usual walking tours of the out of the way neighborhoods that we like to explore.  Once you get beyond the tourist realm, a city will open up.

And we were stunned to see the modernist purity.  Long, I mean really long, apartment blocks with direct overtones of Corb.  New hospital buildings which was nothing more than a long and low modernist slab.  Houses which look like they could have been part of the Weisenhoff exhibition.  Sports complexes which date to the 70s that might have been inspired by Hans Scharoun.

Modernist purity.  It is absolutely great to see.  I sketched the example above from one of the mind blowing, brutalist apartment buildings that we saw.  This is the kind of building which they are tearing down in other places.  These mega monolithic abstractions typically fail due to crime, neglect and the inhumanity of it all.

However, this example seemed to be doing fine.  It looked like all of the apartments were occupied.  There were stores and shops in the base of the building.  There were not many people walking around it, but that could have been because it was a Sunday morning.  The architect did their absolute best to break up the mass via stepping and offsets.

In my sketch the next morning, I tried to capture the overall dominant structure along with the faceting of the facade.