The Pope John Paul II Hall and Pastoral Center in Trsat, commemorates two events – one deeply rooted in the past and religious lore, one recent and filled with contemporary significance – both of profound religious, social, and cultural importance for Croatia. The first was the legendary transfer (by a host of angels) of the Nazareth Tabernacle to Trsat in 1291, where it remained for three years before continuing its journey to Loreto; an event first marked by a church built on the site in the late 13th century, followed by a new church and Franciscan monastery in the 15th century, expanded and altered over the centuries, and which became one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Croatia. The second event was a visit to the site by Pope John Paul II in 2003, during which he blessed the foundation stone for a yet-to-be-conceived building, thereby providing the impetus for the construction of the Hall itself.

The last event had more than religious significance. The papal visit, John Paul’s third, was momentous for Croatia. The first Pope ever to intentionally set foot on Croatian soil (Pope Alexander III was shipwrecked on the coast in the 12th century) John Paul II shared both the Central European heritage and experience of state communism with his Croatian hosts. The event, therefore, marked both the resurgence of religious practice in the postsocialist Republic of Croatia and renewed connection not only to the Vatican, but to Europe as a whole.

Randic and Turato’s Hall resonates with the import of these connections and their significance for the collective identity and aspirations of Croatians. The building is in many ways the material embodiment of the conditions of purposefulness and chance that were its origins. The contained volume of the Hall with its nearly pyramidal hip roof, taut surfaces, and clean lines is both archetypal (an ur-form) and radically contemporary. Indeed, it plays these contradictory conditions off against each other. Its mass is at once monumental, and dematerialized by light that filters through the geometric ‘lace-work’ of the perforated terracotta skin. The patterns of perforation – like the computerized Op Art pieces of the Zagreb-based New Tendencies group in the 1960s – create a dynamic visual tension in the surface itself. To the eye, it appears as if the perforations are themselves created by unseen forces alternatively pulling, relaxing, and stretching the taut surfaces of the light terracotta volume. The pixilation of the surface – which is in fact far more visceral and tectonic than computer generated pixilation would be – generates a tension between the stable and symmetrical form and the highly unstable patterns that play across its planes. One can read this play of opposites and transmutation as the architectonic correlative of the contradiction-filled and uncertain transitional condition of contemporary Croatia, which today is balanced on the edge, and poised to enter, the EU. It is a condition in which an untold number of forces are pulling in a multitude of directions, and in which stability always seems to contain its opposite. This condition is powerfully evoked in the position of the terracotta Hall as well, which is poised slightly askew on its concrete base – a condition which is clearly visible from the elevated vantage point of the path taken by pilgrims approaching the site from the Trsat hill to the site.

Immersed in Mediterranean and Central European culture, Croatian architecture has deep roots in the urban and architectural traditions of its cities. But, like Randic and Turato, Croatian architects always seem to set their sights on the future, not the past. Correspondingly, the pastoral center is both urban object and urban space – temple and agora – it defines a courtyard space of assembly and celebration for pilgrims (who number in the thousands on Assumption Day), while hugging and reinforcing the direction of the stone wall that encloses the site. It is all about awareness – awareness of the operation of the enclosing wall in organizing the pilgrimage experience itself; awareness of the juxtaposition of old and new wall, of old church and monastery buildings and the new courtyard-cum-urban square with its framing arcade, of the spacing of the arcade walls that expands towards the center and contracts at the edges – making their differences and relationships to one another both apparent and meaningful. As it organizes and reconfigures the relationships among the multi-layered component parts of the pilgrim site – it also creates an other or ‘third space’ between them – a natural amphitheatre carved into the abutting hillside, which makes it possible to conduct outdoor services at the peak of the pilgrimage calendar.

For all of its autochthonous formal tropes – that stimulate memory and animate place – the Pastoral Center is all about the present, about use, and experience that combines the physical with the spiritual. The experience of the building and broader complex is carefully calibrated in terms of transition between light and darkness, sunlit plaza and shaded arcade, communal worship and solitary contemplation. At different times the arcade operates as a shaded cloister, at other times, as for example when the square is filled with pilgrims the deep bays separated by unevenly spaced concrete slabs easily transform into impromptu confessionals.

Inside, the hall embodies the simplicity and asceticism of the Franciscan Order. A whitewashed volume that follows the contours of the outer shell, it is at once unequivocally straightforward and, like the outside, filled with subtle and unexpected surprises. The more one looks, the more one sees: for example, the golden yellow pulpit that both is, and isn’t a pulpit; the yellow band of color at shoulder height that circumscribes the room, delineating base from superstructure, plays perceptual games with the visual reading of the wall planes above and below it. Throughout, expectations are both satisfied and confounded. Vertical and horizontal glass panels fill the space with an even light, but their own surfaces are dappled with a flickering moiré pattern of shadow and light cast by the perforations in the terracotta shell. Like the exterior, stasis and animation are in constant play.

The commemorative space and structure of Randic and Turato’s John Paul II Pastoral Center are permanent, solid, and timeless. But they are also entirely of the moment, flexible, adaptable, dynamic, and oriented toward the future. Most important of all, they are both filled with purpose and radically open to chance. This combination of purpose and chance ensures that each visit – each new experience of the work – will be not only different from the last, but also fundamentally new.
Eve Blau

Pope John Paul II Hall, Rijeka, Croatia
Architect: Saša Randic , Idis Turato (Randic – Turato Architects)
Collaborators: Sinisa Glusica, Gordan Resan, Iva Cuzela-Bilac, Ana Stanicic (Technical Architects)
Client: Franciscan monastery Trsat
Design: 2003
Construction: 2008
Total floor area: 1,048 m2