Mateja Panter, “Plečnik vs. Le

40. Ibid.

41. Andrej Mercina, Arhitekt Ilija Arnautović: socializem v slovenski arhitekturi (Ljubljana: Viharnik, 2006), 78. its organisation and program. The project, which presented the agenda of a residential neighbourhood for 5,000 residents, was made for the second exhibition, “Family and Household” (“Porodica i domaćinstvo”) in 1958 in Zagreb. The neighbourhood was designed as a geometrically correct scheme. It was organised on the basis of a tree structure that extends from the traffic centre along the main road and consists of smaller residential districts with 300 to 1,000 inhabitants, grouped around the centre with a larger playground, basic supply facilities, and an educational institution. Each is divided again into smaller quarters, in which residents are supposed to know and help each other.40 The main motor traffic is excluded from the neighbourhood - children must not cross any motor roads on their way to school or the playground. Blind roads lead to residential buildings, ending with parking lots and garages. There is a consistently planned concentration of population around the core of the neighbourhood, in five-storey high-rise buildings, which get with distance replaced by apartment blocks, and then terraced houses. In the centre of the neighbourhood are a school, shops, and other important institutions that must be within walking distance of all residential buildings.

The social program of the neighbourhood is a response to alienation in the modern city - it offers integration into the community and, consequently, the establishment of identity through identification. The individual is supposed to transfer part of their activities from the closest family circle within the apartment to the common living quarters, which offer different services. This kind of activity of an individual, which relieves the apartment of certain functions, is also an excuse for smaller areas of new apartments. A neighbourhood generally does not require a specific form but a program of activities designed to meet people’s needs.41 In contrast to the employment- or socially homogeneous postwar settlements, the neighbourhood unit represents a settlement of people of mixed occupations, identities and social status, intending to achieve a more balanced population structure.

The neighbourhood model, with calculations, schemes, and a program, served as an abstract blueprint, a basis for designing the first residential neighbourhoods in Ljubljana - it was supposed to ensure the planning of a reliably pleasant living environment.

In 1958, by law, housing communities were defined as self-governing units for a specific urban area, and the neighbourhood became a spatial unit of the housing community. The residential neighbourhood development coincided

The neighbourhood model

GUP

Opposite page: Figure 8: 1954, Vällingby neighbourhood, Sweden