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Interview
Krešimir Rogina i Vinko Penezić u svom uredu / Krešimir
Rogina and Vinko Penezić in their office
PENEZIÆ&ROGINA
Architects
of General
Practice
Famous Croatian architects Krešimir Rogina
and Vinko Penezić talk about their beginnings,
international success, recently held symposium
in Grožnjan, and other things regarding
their work and the architectonic scene in
Croatia
Interviewed by: Ivana Bioèina
Photo: Kristina Faziniæ
28
Your arrival to the architectonic scene was more
then tempestuous when you won the contest
for constructing the Mladost Sport Centre at the
age of 25. Which were the positive, and which
were the negative sides of winning such a large contest
right after graduating from college and with no previous
working experience
Penezić: The negative side was that we lost our “virginity”
very quickly. The positive side was that we received
the opportunity to construct a building as very young
architects, which is unusual for the architectonic profession.
They say that architects are young at the age
of forty because that’s when they usually receive an
opportunity to build houses. The process of real education
and training through practice is very long, and
that’s when you usually get the opportunity to build. We
had that luck to have the first real project we created
immediately head into realization. That was definitely
an enormous encouragement, as many doors opened
for us and our career was on the way up. After that,
several other important contests of equally big formats
followed. What’s interesting is that we had parallel success
in Japan, so that duality of theoretical projects,
reflecting and pondering over architecture and then
building, which is really the true meaning of architecture,
has been present in our work since the beginning.
In a way, that duality has also defined us.