At the invitation of “Oris” to give a talk, we discussed what the appropriate topic should be – whether we should present individual projects or go for a theoretical, i.e. a critical discourse. We eventually settled on the issue of what architecture is today, what the position of Croatian architects is, and what we believe to be current and important. “The 21st Century” seemed a suitable working title for today’s talk. 

The reason for this decision is an anecdote about a client of ours who came to “Art Avant-Garde” to select an architect for his house. The situation was explained to him in, more or less, these terms: “This one is more retro oriented, this one is a classicist, this one is this, and that one is that, and these Njirić people are for the 21st century”. The question now arises: who is not for the 21st century, and can we operate as though we were in the 19th century? What is our relationship to the modern and how do we interpret the events around us? The role of the architect is to interpret and perceive things around him as an author – this is an imperative that cannot be ignored.