A new perspective : Croatian national centre for hydrological and ecosystem research

Man's perception of landscape plays an important role in shaping the space surrounding him and the environment that mutually affects him. The way we see it is the way we imagine it, and the way in which we create a collective sense of a place that in the end defines it. Relationship between the city of Zagreb and river Sava has always been perceived as controversial, problematic and anything but productive. The use of the river and its banks today is not adapted to the contemporaniety of the city and the strategical, geographical and cultural potential it offers. Lakes Savica are one of few areas along the river that managed to keep a fully natural appearance while being a home to a dozen animal and plant species, and modestly being used as a recreational and fishing area by the inhabitants. The project establishes a connection between the neglected river and the city that surrounds it, with the mediation of man's perception of the landscape as natural, cultural and social creation. It proposes a system of spaces that use the element of water as a crucial interpreter of collective sense of place and create a new ecological centre that paradoxically offers another viewpoint on, from one side a landscape that represents today's impression of a natural, wild but active landscape, and from the other side a landscape that is of great economical importance but lacks a contemporary use.