The urban canopy on the northern side of Poljana square in Sibenik spatially connects the two adjacent triangular entrances of the new underground garage while forming a visual and material barrier that protects the square’s main public surface from a busy city road. Its fragmented, triangulated shape, frozen in a permanent flutter, echoes the slanted, butterfly roof geometry of Ivo Vitic’s modernist library building, flanking Poljana Square from the south.The canopy was not primarily envisaged as an urban lounging area, but more of a transitory resting spot on a frequent urban trajectory, a place for short breaks and brief encounters, a lay-by for citizens caught in-between their daily errands. However, it seems to slowly develop into a meeting place where locals tend to linger and congregate, both by day and night. The simple wooden slabs of the benches are clamped to the careening, angled metal pillars, which serve both as occasional backrests and roof holders. Some seats are attached to the five young trees that will form the future green canopy in addition to the metal one. Both benches and pillars oscillate wildly in their rotation, with benches lacking a proper backrest, in order to underline their free, fleeting, incidental use - almost as if the citizens are temporarily occupying a sculpture - instead of providing fixed, directed urban sitting. The narrowing of the bench towards the tip and the hidden cantilever steel joint additionally lighten up the whole dynamic assembly. The metal canopy, manufactured in the Split shipyard, needed to be transported in two parts and then mounted onto the pre-planted pillars. The whole project is an integral part of the general redesign of Poljana square (by architects P. Simetin and I. Tutek), completed in summer 2020.
Asistent dizajner Tvrtko Bojić, Projekt konstrukcije KAp4 / Toni Lipovac, Antonio Šafranko, Realizacija: Brodosplit, Drvne konstrukcije Voćin
Photos by Vanja Magic and Numen/For Use