Drago Ibler
A pioneer of Croatian modernism and founder of the Zemlja group.
A late-1930s residential building in central Zagreb by the architect Drago Ibler, known locally as the wooden skyscraper. The name misleads: the building is not made of wood. The nickname came from its facade, clad in dark timber boards in horizontal bands between the windows — an entirely unusual solution for a residential building of that period, giving it a warmth that set it apart from the white render around it. Ibler was a pioneer of modernism in Croatia and founded the Zemlja artistic group. The building is a model of central European modernism in its 1930s phase: simple masses, horizontal balconies, ribbon windows and a refusal of historical ornament. What makes it worth stopping at is that Zagreb is full of interwar architecture — the city expanded in those decades and did not suffer extensive war damage, so its modern fabric survives relatively complete. That is rare in central Europe. The building is private housing and is not visited — the facade from the street is the whole of it.
A pioneer of Croatian modernism and founder of the Zemlja group.
The dark timber set it apart from everything around it.
Zagreb is among the most complete central European cities for 1930s architecture.
Trg Republike Austrije, central Zagreb
Because the city was not extensively bombed in the Second World War, unlike Belgrade, Zadar or the German cities. Authority over it changed more than once but the urban fabric remained. The result is that Zagreb keeps continuous layers: baroque in the Upper Town, nineteenth-century historicism in the Lenuci Horseshoe, 1930s modernism, and socialist architecture in Novi Zagreb — all still standing.
A sequence of eight squares and gardens laid out in a horseshoe through central Zagreb, planned in the late nineteenth century. Around the squares were built the city's main institutions: the academy, the national theatre, the museums and the railway station. Walking the full horseshoe takes about an hour and passes most of Zagreb's representative architecture — the best walk in the city.
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