- Site-specific cases
Built in the 1960’s by architect Ivan Vitic, Motel Trogir is a fine example of 20th-century modernism in Yugoslavia. Caught between the turbulent decades that followed, the building was left in a derelict state, and the borders once established between nature and culture have been crossed. The project is inspired by the spontaneous landscape in and around Motel Trogir, a condition that shines a light towards a new possible placemaking approach. We venture into a paradox exciting to explore — to preserve a modernist legacy by moving the human away from the center of the story. We explore a narrative on the aesthetics and ethics: the decay is not necessarily ugly and the unbuilt is not genuinely empty. Vitic’s building is not a form following function anymore, yet it maintains an inherent value in its relation to the sea and the natural environment. In these conditions, we ask ourselves: what kind of hybrid landscape can encompass both humans and non-humans in a new symbiosis?
Three layers form an alternative hybrid landscape; the first layer is spatially defined by the remains of Motel Trogir, the second consists of the forest; all the trees, plants, wild grass, insects and animals that have populated the building and the surroundings. The final layer is a network of elevated pathways cutting through the site.
A walk in the park. / The past remains, and even returns.
*photograph by Tilmann Meyer-Faje, courtesy of the author, 2019
