The exhibition Bogdan Budimirov: A House for Two will open on Tuesday, 23 January, at 6 pm in Oris House of Architecture. The exhibition will focus solely on Budimirov’s project of his own family house. On 30 January, at 6 pm, there will also be a talk with the architect hosted by Maroje Mrduljaš, Lovorka Prpić and Feđa Vukić. 

The exhibition will stay on view until 6 February.

 

In fact, nothing changes all the time, but so, as we change during the years, the program is corrected. The question is—is it this house that we will make? After a while, my wife may think and point the finger at a point in the draft. Finally, she said, ‘Why should we build? Why do we not put two containers? We do not need a building permit for that!

 

Bogdan Budimirov, in an interview with Vladimir Mattioni, summer 2002.

 

With an aphorism, typical of him, Bogdan Budimirov ironizes, but actually reveals the trap of designing for oneself. To design one’s own house is difficult for an architect – particularly in the case of a plot to which the family is emotionally attached. The plot on Perjavica is very large, green and sunny, devoid of mitigating spatial restrictions: there are countless possible variants of solutions. An architect finds it hard to find time for themselves because there is always a more important job to do, which further hampers the already slow process of the creation of a house.

 

Budimirov began the design of the house for his wife and himself in the late 1960s, when he was only forty. Decades have passed since then: the 21st variation was finally executed. A House for Two is almost finished today; it remains to install some equipment and lay the final layer of the floor in the interior. Meanwhile, the owners have moved into the house. They brought in only the most necessary things. In the living room, in place of the future dining table, Budimirov placed Moya, his drawing table at which he designs the elements of equipment and details that are missing. He produces drawings on a daily basis. The living room has become an architectural workshop; a house for two has become Budimirov’s work in progress – a house emptied of the superfluous. Everyday work as the meaning, the living of life.

 

Lovorka Prpić, Oris 104, 2017


 

 

Bogdan Budimirov 

 

Born in 1928 in Izbište, Banat. He went to elementary and high school in Bela Crkva, his high school graduation was in 1948. That same year he came to Zagreb and enrolled in the Department of Architecture at the Technical Faculty, University of Zagreb. He became a senior student in 1960, and graduated in 1975. In 1957, he took a job in GMP Jugomont as head of their technology department, where he worked until 1963 when he joined the design company Inženjering-projekt as head of the group for prefabricates. In 1966, he took a job in Interplet which sent him to Germany to work as technical manager in their company Interbau, where he remained until 1969. Since 1969, he had been working with architect Wirsing and in 1970 transferred to the design company Plan GmbH. From 1978 to 1985 he worked in the company Moya and then independently, all in Munich. He returned to Zagreb in 1988 and works as a freelance artist. Characteristic for his work is the cooperation within a group, and a creation of a complex product (function, construction, technology and form). Through a form of group work he created prefabricated systems YU-60, YU-61, Spačva, Marles, and SPIG. He was deputy chief designer in the company Plan GmbH. He created prefabricated systems for the construction of the trade fair in Nuremberg, as well as a prefabricated system for the construction of the passenger building at the airport Munich II, and with Wirsing, a  steel system for the party headquarters of the SPD in Bonn. In the company Moya he worked on the design of office furniture. Here he created a drawing table for which, in 1982, he was awarded Gute Industrieform in Hanover. Today he works in industrial design and the design of unique furniture and special constructions. He has held numerous lectures in professional institutions and associations as well as at the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb. In 2007, the publishing company UPI2M Books published his book In the First Person, for which he won the CAA's publicist award in 2008. He was also recipient of the Viktor Kovačić Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2006.