Croatia

Cloud Pergola/The Architecture of Hospitality at the Croatian pavilion is conceived by the pavilion curator, Bruno Juričić, as a collaborative site-specific environment, an installation crossing the boundaries of architecture, art, engineering, robotic fabrication and computational models. The exhibition is structured through the interplay of three interventions: Cloud Drawing by Alisa Andrašek in collaboration with Bruno Juričić, To Still the Eye by Vlatka Horvat and Ephemeral Garden by Maja Kuzmanović. In the cultural context of the Mediterranean, the typology of pergola (a minor architectural element) maps a specific experience. As a simple, elementary, vernacular structure, possessing a vivid spatial gesture inhabiting the space in-between private and public, man-made and natural environment, a natural shadow and shelter from the sun. The installation proposes that the space of hospitality, as experienced under the pergola, is based on the fact that the role of boundaries, either physical or non-physical, is not any more to enclose space, or police its boundaries, but rather to form tissue for osmotic exchange. Furthermore, to recognise the active participation of non-human forces in ‘Events’ and understanding that the agency of space spawns beyond human purposiveness.