The workshop is open for architects, artists, journalists, activists, researchers, designers, and all those who are interested in the issue of transition in public spaces. It discusses the function of the square in a modern city through theoretical texts and a local example – Franjo Tuđman Square in Zagreb.

On the first day, we will read texts by Sharon Zukin, Jordi Borja, and Manuel Castells, discussing the public space in today’s economic and political circumstances, including the privatization processes and the creation or dissolution of communities through urban spaces. Having mapped the crucial issue, on the second day of the workshop we will turn to the specific case of Franjo Tuđman Square, which has recently come again into the focus of attention of urban planners, architects, researcher of urbanity, and the general public, after the presentation of architect Nenad Fabijanić about its “renewal”. With the help of press-clipping and texts on the history of the square, we will reflect on its meanings and functions then and now, and track the symptomatic (official and unofficial) changes in its nomenclature: from the “French” (Revolution?) “Square” to the “Square of a Doctor” and then to the “Square of the Victims of Transition.” Keeping in mind the proposed project, the real-estate speculations and the intentional destruction of the Kamensko textile factory in the background, as well as the destructive consequences of this administrative strategy has had for the social and economic life of the city, we have opened the discussion about the square’s future. What sort of programmes, efforts, and practices will have the potential of building up the city in order to make (or maintain) this square a truly public one? The joint reflection on this issue during the workshop is intended to create visual or textual drafts for proper actions or intervention (artistic, political, social, architectural…) in that segment of the city.