The fantastic forest phenomenon: testing a new narrative

2019
Team point of view
Cities like Karlovac need new narratives, good stories that have the power to attract everything they are missing: people, money and excitement. Due to a very convenient geological position, Karlovac has the potential to become a leading regional energy centre.
The role of Luščić, a new research hub in the city, is to explore this possibility for new productivity, as well as similar ones, in and around the city. New strategies are developed, introducing a network of new flows through the city. The neighbourhood itself is designed to function as an independent ecosystem of a peculiar, forest-like environment, a hybrid urban and natural habitat that serves as an exciting arena for experiment and imagination.

Jury point of view
The project seeks to highlight the fact that the ambience of the former barracks, in the image and perception of Karlovac, is actually an infrastructure-equipped "forest" ideal for recreational use with minimal interventions in terms of reconstruction of existing facilities and future construction that should be of mixed character.
The project makes a convincing and fairly detailed case for a renewed role of architecture to propose concrete and grounded screenplay for urban development. It relies on the topics of contemporary architectural discourse as a platform for a new beginning.

2020-2022
In the summer 2020, the City of Karlovac contacted both the team of Fantastic forest phenomenon project and Europan Croatia to launch the implementation of the winning project, which would become an Urban Development Plan called ‘Luščić - center’.
To do so, the team must first partner with a licensed planning office. They choose the “URBANISTICA” office to form a legal partnership.
During the initial discussions with the city of Karlovac, the team kept stressing out the designed flexibility of their plan and the need to include the public, to establish a participatory process in order to be able to make critical decisions in the implementation and thus obtain a really impactful and high quality result for the urban plan.
A public forum was organised, prior to even starting the urban planning stage. Through this initiative, inhabitants, local organisations and city structures were able to voice their opinions, recommendations and needs, which were later carefully implemented in the plan development phase. It became obvious that the city needed some additional public and commercial buildings, that weren’t acknowledged before. A new kindergarten, a school, a sports hall, a home for the elderly people and a hotel have been integrated into the plan. Some other functions originally planned in the competition turned out to be superfluous such as the movie theatre that the city planned elsewhere and some housing towers considered in much larger number than necessary.
After this public forum, the team works during one year to the elaboration of the urban development plan ‘Luščić – center’. There were many interactions, consultations with the City and different NGOs which were all extremely involved and active at every phase of the planning. An important part of the whole process was Europan Croatia, who had formed an advisory body, consisting of Karlovac Society of Architects, members of the City council and Europan, which monitored the whole process of the plan development. Their main objective was to help the team with the realities of implementation, and to ensure that the main ideas of the original Europan project were integrated into the plan.
In January 2022 the Karlovac City Council adopted the urban development plan. The involvement of the winning team has officially ended with the approval of the urban development plan ‘Luščić – center’. The city had made the kindergarten and school their priority, and the design phase is underway. These will be the first buildings erected in Luščić, while other public buildings (public swimming pool, research center, public park etc.), will be developed after having launched architectural competitions.