Architecture Papers of the Faculty of Architecture and Design STU (Sep 2020)
Bratislava, (un)planned city: Notes on the study and interpretation of the history of city planning and construction
Abstract
In Slovakia, after 1989, there were dramatic changes in the town-planning, which were conditioned by the change in social conditions and of paradigm in planning and regulation of construction in the city. In the whole Czechoslovakia, this meant a rejection of modernist urban practice. In Bratislava, this phenomenon manifested itself very intensively. Within a few years, the planning institutions that have been developed for decades disappeared. With the growing criticism of the events of that time, there were also growing efforts to take a holistic view of the issue of city planning and construction. Glimpses into the past indicated that the first precondition for dealing with this situation would be an analysis of the history of modern planning and construction in Bratislava. The study analyses the starting points, methodological tools, and results of research carried out by a team of architects and historians of architecture since 2014. It describes the current situation in the field of urban research, with an emphasis on examining the morphology of urban structure. It draws attention to the line of current research, which understands the city as an open work with the potential of a number of development possibilities, which cannot be perfectly guided or coordinated. This trend is followed by the presented research, which aims to approach the history of modern planning in Bratislava, to reveal and describe the relationship between planning and construction, to define architectural and urban concepts and paradigms relevant to Bratislava's urban structure, to examine selected examples of their application in the material structure of the city and on their basis to reveal the laws of its development.
