Exhibition Medprostor and Time-In-Between

Medprostor and Time-In-Between by Maroje Mrduljaš

In 1924, Mies van der Rohe argued that "architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space." On the other hand, and perhaps paradoxically, Mies created architecture that strove towards eternity, whose "open" spatial conception was in fact fully complete and perfect, and thus unchanging, in a way denying the notion of existential time. Is a kind of reversal possible? Can we think of an architecture that is not firmly and unequivocally anchored in one particular cultural or existential moment; that grows out of its time but can simultaneously express multiple epochs; that lasts a long time and is capable of aging, changing, and offering different readings? Such architecture is interested in time (or temporality) understood as a concept that also refers to history and culture, to existential time, time of nature, time of material ... All these times have their own flow, their own speed and oscillations of current, their own plots. They can intertwine, cooperate and polemicize or sometimes do not even touch each other, but flow completely independently.

Medprostor is in the same measure dominated by issues of architectural language, style, picture (picturesqueness), but it seems as if it has also emancipated itself from them and has completely focused on the reality of architectural space, which is difficult to express through architectural analysis. The essential does not have to be simplified, the necessary does not have to be minimal, an organic concept does not have to be submissive to the natural environment … With metaphor and a provisional concept of time or temporality we have tried to convey the multilayeredness and existential foundation of the architecture of Medprostor.