Nikola Bojic / Glass Peristyle / 2008 / independent project
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“...it is not even an exterior, inasmuch as when you seek to look at the hotel’s outer walls you cannot see the hotel itself but only the distorted images of everything that surrounds it.” Frederic Jameson on Bonaventure Hotel, 1984
GLASS PERISTYLE media intervention / 08
What does it mean to interpolate a tumor into the urban tissue of vital importance? What are the consequences of that act in social, cultural and political terms? This (anti)project predicting a worst case scenario by interpolating a private commercial facility in the volume of the Peristyle – an ancient Public Square under UNESCO protection, the very heart and soul of the city of Split in Croatia. Simulations of the architectural project launched throughout all the accessible public media provoked incredible discussion, anger and frustration in the general public, as well as in professional and political circles. The virtual project generated a powerful reflection of our political and social reality determined by spectacle and paradox. The project was featured in all important Croatian media in 2008; it was exhibited on the 29th Youth Salon Zagreb – Salon of the Revolution, 2008; the 4th Zagreb salon – Anti design / Permanent alternatives, 2009; and presented on the international conference “Designing the Hybrid City” in Shanghai, China, 2010.