Overview and Evaluation of the Dissertation of Vesna Mikic, M.Sc. –
“Antun Ulrich's Opus – classical modernism”


Overview:

As the motto of her thesis, the author cites one of the representatives and theoreticians of purism and Le Corbusier’s supporter Ozenfant: “Deep in any revolution, discretely hidden, resides classicism, which is the form of permanence.” That is also the guiding principle which enables the author to open the insufficiently perceived subject of classical architecture of modernism through the analysis of Antun Ulrich’s opus.
The dissertation is divided into two volumes. Book I (pg. 163) scrutinizes the issues not only of the genesis of Ulrich’s modernity but also modern architecture in general, based on the principles of classical art. Book II (pg. 268) provides the catalogue of objects (90 catalogue units) in diachronical and typological sequence.
Book I is divided into larger chapters: INDTRODUCTION (cultural context); ZAGREB CIRCLE WITHIN THE EUROPEAN ARTISTIC SCOPE; GENESIS OF CLASSICAL ULRICH’S MODERNITY (30s and 40s). The architectonics of these chapters was structured in additional sub-chapters, with the following thesis holders: Classical element in the modern and Author’s personal language.
In the theoretical part, through finding and elaborating on the relevant texts from recent literature (for example Tzonis/Lafaivre: Das klasische in der Architektur. Die Poetik der Ordnung 1987; Kenet Frampton: Grundlagen der Architektur; Studien zur Kultur des Tektonischen 1993; John Summerson: The Classical language of architecture 1995; Paul Naredi Rainer: Architektur und Harmonie 1995) and numerous other titles cited in the BIBLIOGRAPHY and GENERAL LITERATURE (165 titles overall), as well as comparative examples of architectural creation, she follows the transformability and style of the antique exemplars in the pluralism of classicism in the 18th and the 19th century and the transitional periods from the 18th into the 19th and the 19th into the 20th century which would open the road towards contemporary architecture. It was necessary to also include the opposing romantic influences in the ideological aspect of historicism and literary reflections from the area of the theory of literature and aesthetics, which, in the structural and theoretical sense, touch on each other, separate and interweave (Semper the classical rationalist – Viollet Le Duc the romantic rationalist; conceptual pair Atticism – Asianism applicable to the cubic and floral secession).
The key chapter for the thesis on classicism of contemporary architecture, as well as Ulrich’s Classical element in the modern, in which the author examines how big a constitutive element classicism is in contemporary art and how big a share our Ancient history has in “Mediterranean foil” in coexistence with the Central European cultural morphology.
The author concludes that only classicism could have answered the basic questions of contemporary architecture through its disciplines, but not through formal elements, but through its ability to transform the concept into an architectural form, to answer the basic questions of rational architecture, tectonics, geometry, proportion, rhythm, the building style. What is important is not the formal resonance with the classical, but that which is “hidden beneath its surface – order, simplicity, unambiguity, essence”.
The first part is thus the examination of a two-century long architectural scene, while the second part investigates Ulrich’s modernity constituted in stylistic changes, in the relationship between structure and ornaments, in the spatial concept. Granted, the author often repeats what was previously stated, but in a different context, while discovering the elements of classical in different segments of Ulrich’s building artistry.
The author follows his work biography throughout the entire book through cultural and architectural suppositions, the realization of the first two generations of Croatian architects at the turn of the century, in cities where he attended school, in the Zagreb circle with the Technical high school and his professor Bastl, in the Vienna circle with the Hoffman school, with the overview of Wagner, Loos and the unavoidable Kovačić, while underlining, on the example of Zagreb, classicism as the constitutive element of our cultural identity. Further on, on the Vienna-Berlin route, in the Zagreb circle during the avant-garde culture of the 30s influenced by the Russian constructivism, German expressionism, Italian rationalism, which will all serve as pointers in the space in which Ulrich’s architecture formed and developed. She follows it from his student years, through the accomplished works and works for which he bided, on public and housing construction, in interventions into urban space, until the late modernism and different tasks after the Second World War.
The analysis of paradigmatic examples from his opus enabled the author to discover the artistic strength of his personal language and to conclude that from the entire time period elapsed “the genesis of emergence of the Croatian modernity could be read” and that Ulrich could be viewed as a “typical representative of modernism of the world proportions”.
In the methodology, the author put special emphasis on personal contact with Ulrich, which she had been doing since 1990, his views on the problems of contemporary architecture, authentic memories regarding people and circumstances. The important, although quite scarce, documentation consists of works from Ulrich’s personal archives which he opened up to the author. She has supplemented this original material with the material from the GPZ Civil Engineering Department and compared it with the field results, which is included in the object catalogue and additionally corroborated by the overview of Ulrich’s work published in the periodicals.

Evaluation:
In her Doctoral dissertation, Vesna Mikić Brodnjak depicts an extremely complex period of the two centuries in which two architectural streams – classicism and romanticism – work simultaneously at the beginning of the 20th century. She does not simply limit her study to their stylistic features, but also structural changes, systematically following the one which would enable her to confirm the thesis about the classicism of contemporary architecture. Her research is made even more interesting by her attempts to demonstrate the process based on the personality of just one author, Antun Ulrich, thus opening the possibility of the subject on establishing the classical discourse in the valorization of the Croatian contemporary architecture.

Olga Marusevski, Ph.D.

October 6, 1998.