With the fact that we exist we have found ourselves on the way of the time direction, made up of an endless line of points – units of time. We are living a point of a time direction and we have great responsibility to follow it (follow the order), otherwise the past and future eyes will spot, that in this time of ours a disorder happened and that we were not able to transmit the inherited order.
Space is a category that requires a very careful, gentleman-like relation towards itself. In Australian museums beside specially valuable exposits it is written: „Touch with Your eyes only, which should be applied to the space too. It needs cautious conquering, according to an old saying “measure three times, cut out once”. First we have to ensure the ways to be able to “flow” through the space, and after that, micro-spaces for different types of human activities, from living, working to leisure. Ways should be wide to satisfy both vehicular and pedestrian traffic and plots so big, that people staying on them still feel that they are in space, and not tied up. And these are some bases of urbanism, which seem so logical and easy to follow. Since the Second World War great non-understanding of that basic logic has happened on the Croatian coast and we are facing its consequences today.
Picture from the sea
I like to „read“ the town from the sea. According to the roof tiles I like to see where the old core is, according to the church-tower where the main square is, according to the beaches where its hotels are, according to the buildings where the living is. And there by the edge, according to the cypresses where its grave-yard is. Unfortunately our towns have become illegible. The most beautiful face should be turned to the sea. I enjoy seeing the horizon full of masts while landward breeze is blowing. For many foreign eyes the contact from the sea is the first contact with our country.
Each journey, for instance along the coast of the middle Dalmatia, has two poles for a person trying to understand space problems. In that duality positive charge is made up of Beaufort numbers, stone coast line by the sea, cyclone, Austro-Hungarian quays and lighthouses, rosin and cicada and only a few newly built cabins. Negative charge is made up of factories on the beaches, rammed, concrete structures with no logical sequence, settlements of buildings with added wings and stories, fronts with all rainbow colours. And then I want to sail but not in a boat, but in the time machine.
Return
I would like to take a jump only fifty years back into the past, take a group of experts and start again. Dalmatia „Ab Ovo“. We would build roads 10m wide, plots of min. 600m2, houses of determined colours and materials, but with more freedom of forming, enough parking place, so that roads are used for driving and not for getting through among the parked cars. We would protect cores and hamlets from pulling down and spreading, so that they would become pedestrian oasis…
As there is no time machine, is the dream solution? Should we sell the tourist only the sea, pictures of Dalmatia as it once used to be and virtual Croatia, or is it still possible to do something? I am sure, the answer is positive. We mustn’t let the views from the town to the sea be more beautiful than the views from the sea to the town.
Future
We should animate collective conscious, showing that we want to be better and that we can do it. At this moment the whole coast is in the phase of „urbanisation“, but only in the sense that zoning plans, that will bring order to the space, are being brought slowly and massively. They might bring order in some new zones, but let’s remain on the questions what to do with the existing devastated areas. They are legal enough to avoid drastic pulling down, but not enough harmonious for us to be proud of them. OK, big factories started falling down under excavators, big complexes are handing the place over to investments of state importance, but who will care for a small man? For his not plastered blocks on the terrace and joists put together to the half for the next floor (staying like that for years), families with six cars in the house with no garage and yard? They are used to it, they accept those problems as well as other life misfortunes and they have learned to live with them.
But somebody scrupulous should point to the problem and lend them a hand. The state and the town should motivate the people. The Croatian Chamber of Commerce has already done some specific steps in that sense, and it deserves praise. Architects’ big task would be to find a technology for solution. Here are suggestions for some methods:
- Find a zone a.e. Mlija in Omiš, and there, as on an example show that its picture from the sea can be changed. Form a group of experts who would analyse all space problems, categorize them and make financial studies.
- The town takes responsibility for solving the infrastructure, finishes all the planned roads, and restores the existing ones with interpolation, of so many parking places as possible.
- Correct the existing designs of objects in that zone, so that houses are finished in a more harmonious way than they were planned. Determine a few possible colours of fronts, materials and the way the stone is put together, type of window shutters, type of sun-blinds. Dig in all the instalments and take away all the existing electric posts. Put a new, modern public lightning.
- Set high plants in all free zones and gardens to a maximal degree. Organize an action „the most beautiful town garden“ and reward the best one.
- Organize loans, partly not payable back, which is in the interest of the town, because its picture from the sea will be more acceptable, which brings many other advantages.
- Gravelling a part of the coast and making a new quay and form a new contact zone in that way, screening the old one, the non-repairable one, with penetrations to the pearls that are worth praising. Organize tenders for bigger operations to achieve a larger number of good-quality solutions.
All other ideas are welcome. If it was achieved, we would not look at photographs sighing after old times, but we would take the ennobled heritage to those coming after us in time and space.
