08/ HZZO, Radman Vrbanek © MMVI Competition

Health Insurance Fund, Zagreb

It is the thirst-quenching public fountains and sun-shading public arcades that make up the welcoming gesture of hospitable cities. Regretfully, most of Zagreb’s arcades have in the recent history been claimed by commercial venues for additional shop window space.
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In an effort to counter this tendency, our project reintroduced the typology of the arcade. It is an exo-nartex, an exterior hall in the best tradition of the Greek stoa, lined with the colonnade of real trees (whose preservation was dictated by the brief). It belongs both to the interior and the exterior. Furthermore, the formal layout of the park in front of the venue was to follow the structural logic of the building, while invoking the myth of Laugier’s Primitive Hut.
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Curiously the winning scheme, while formally similar, distributed the ‘extra’ (meaning, the non-designated space) across the building. In this they privileged the occupants at the expense of the visitors, thereby taking sides (with the client, of course; not the citizen).