ABSTRACT
The main intention behind the work of our diploma studio was to interpret architecture as a cultural discipline. 1 The intention to see architecture as part of a broader world of culture took us inevitably to the domain of the city, the place where culture has developed most explicitly. 2 However, what was true for the relation of architecture and the city in the past is not so obvious in our times. In the last 200 years architecture has established its own professional independence and highly individualised and fragmented history. The former sense of wholeness, based on the participation of architecture in the culture of the city, has been reduced to urban planning, where participation in the complex urban culture is replaced by the knowledge available to a small group of planners, or in extreme cases, to an individual designer. The difference between the planning approach and the way cities came into existence in their long history is overwhelming.
