Space is a basic resource. Architecture has the capacity to essentially affect the overall management of space. As a result, it is incumbent upon it to be aware of the elementary politics inherent in every architectural activity.
More from Tomislav Pavelić:
Since there is now no recognition of any form of positive social aspiration, and there is no faith in the correctness of the current orientation, secure social (and architectural) mechanisms like empathy and in general ethics have either lost their effectiveness or been totally rejected. For this reason there is no surprise that current dramatic social events evince the total unreadiness of most architects to keep up with them, that is to be able to make concrete and effective spatial responses to the concrete social needs and problems.
For architecture to be capable of restoring its social relevance, that is to be once again able to be the spatial generator of processes of social interaction and integration, we need to take the whole debate about the Common Ground of architectural activity (that is of its ambitions and responsibilities) back to the beginning, for if there is any common denominator of our professional activity, then this can only be people and includes literally every member of the social communities within which and for which we work. Only in this way, aware of the breadth of our own social responsibility, will we be able to regain the right to speak from the position of the first person plural.
Pulska grupa works above all, though not solely, locally. The address the city as a restless field of conflict, in which, however, they read a potential for the creation of new spatial and architectural relationships. Their ability to focus on the immediate spatial problems of the environment in which they live gives them the credibility to unite their experiences in a possible methodology of architectural activity in today’s conditions. Since they act in conditions of equality -and not top-down as impersonal, aloof professionals- with their social community, the members of the Pulska grupa formulate their professional and human credo through the formulation that “unmediated democracy demands unmediated space.”
