Unintended City: Architectural and town-planning Conceptions of 19th and 20th century in the Urban Structure of Bratislava
Project APVV-16-0584
Bratislava is a characteristic example of a city that was decisively shaped by the ideas of the 20th century. Over two-thirds of its current area was built in the spirit of the principles of modern architecture and urban planning across the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet these urban or architectonic conceptions, paradoxically, largely formulated the urban structure of Bratislava not within the sense of, but directly against the idea of planned aims. The reason for this contradiction between the ideal and the realized was largely the result of sharp discrepancies in social development under various political orders, yet also through competition between local ideas of the creation of the city and the plans of official representatives towards the form of a national (or regional) capital. The project focuses on the identification and evaluation of specific places within the urban structure that represent the investigated phenomenon of an unintended city. Compiled into a monograph publication, the acquired knowledge will then serve as a reference point in the process of working with the urban structure of Bratislava. With further generalization, it will create an architectonic-urban typology of key situations influencing the form of the city in the 20th century.
Project duration: 01. 07. 2017 / 30. 11. 2020
