Bernardo Bernardi

Projects by grey) (area:

Darko Fritz: visual research, Korčula, since 2016

Chiara Passa: Circle in Circle, installation, Memorijalni kompleks, Korčula, 2019

Maja Marković: visual research, Korčula, 2019.

Maja Marković: Interirror Standstill, series of artworks, installation, exhibition, 2020

Maja Marković: Standstill, billboard art, 2020

Darko Fritz and Sonja Leboš: Interirror Standstill, text, 2020

An Open letter for the preservation of the Memorial Complex by Bernard Bernardi in Korčula, agitation project, 2020

Darko Fritz: Bernardi_Korčula, objekt, 2021.

Darko Fritz i Sani Sardelić: Bernardo Bernardi, public billboard 2021, Korčula (Korčula Town Museum and Grey Area)

Bernardo Bernardi (Korčula, 1921 – Bol on the island of Brač, 1985) is an architect and designer to whom we owe immensely. It is his merit that we have a professional association of designers in Croatia, as well as design education at university level, which is something he advocated for decades. Bernardi was one of the founders of the group EXAT 51, the ULUPUH (Association of Croatian Applied Artists) as well as of the Studio and Centre for Design. He gave the name to one of the most significant regional architectural magazines – Čovjek i prostor (Man and Space). With the range of exquisite architectonic and design projects, Bernardi deserved to have a museum dedicated to his own oeuvre, with which he gave an extraordinary contribution to architecture and interior design in Croatia and Yugoslavia in the second half of the 20th Ct.

Unfortunately, another artistic oeuvre we did not learn to appreciate as much as it deserves.
In effort to re-evaluate the remarkable Bernardi's work, during her residence in Korčula in 2019 in organization of grey) (area – space for contemporary and media art, the artist Maja Marković concentrated on the hotels which Bernardi left behind, together with an impressive memorial monument (1975-1987) and other projects, to his birth town. These are the following hotels: "Marco Polo" (1967-1982), "Park" (1971-1985) and "Liburna" (1979-1985).

For the Hotel "Marko Polo", the first hotel of high category in domestic ownership (according to unverified rumour the Hotel Korčula de la Ville, opened in today's form in 1912, was originally in posession of Czech owners), Bernardi himself claims that it was 'a very delicate task' since the object 'had to be embedded in the architectural landscape of important architectonic features' (Bernardi, 1974). Nowadays, in these words we can retrospectively feel Bernardi's autochthonous pondering over the Mediterranean space in the spirit of Critical Regionalism. It is very interesting that in his own text for the magazine Čovjek i prostor from 1973 Bernardi mentioned that the construction of the hotel stopped the construction (probably non-regulated one) of private houses, while the outstanding sensibility for spatial culture and a pronounced responsibility of the architect we can read from the following words: 'Although the author cannot be excused from his responsibility with these words, he has to say that some building contractors did not achieve an adequate level of the building correctness' (Bernardi, 1973.)

For the Hotel "Marko Polo" Bernardi made an urbanistic-architectonic plan (coauthors: Jovo Kukavičić and Melita Rački, while building statics was calculated by Dubravko Ježina), and the interior design in collaboration with Vasko Lipovac. In 1982 an additional project was made for the wind-shielded space of the main entrance (coauthors: Nenad Ilijić and Zadranka Vitez). Bernardi also designed the architecture of the swimming pool next to the Hotel (1973-1974) together with Nenad Ilijić.
After his professional visit to Finland, Sweden and Denmark in 1960, Bernardi put a lot of energy into presenting top Scandinavian design to Croatian audiences. Therefore, in 1967 he equipped the interior of the congress hall in the Hotel "Marco Polo" with the chairs by Arne Jacobsen from the Series 7 (Syvern), produced by the factory Fritz Hansen, while the lobby in the front of the hall was equipped with Jacobsen's Svanen armchairs, together with multi-layered lamps by Poul Henningsen.
In 1971 Bernardi designed the interior of the central part of the Hotel "Park", in 1973 the draft of the indoor swimming-pool (never carried out), and in 1974, together with the coauthors (Jovo Kukavičić, Marina Valjato and Ivana Valjato), the interior of the reconstructed spaces. In 1981 and 1985 the plans for the redesign of the restaurant were made, and in the period between 1982 and 1983 the project of redesign and expansion of the main entrance hall was carried out (coauthors: Nenad Ilijić and Zadranka Vitez).

Bernardi designed the architecture of the Hotel "Liburna" (it was the first A category hotel in the Pelješac-Korčula region after WWII) which was acceded to above mentioned complexes in the way that the main axis of the Hotel "Liburna" was shifted for 45 degrees in relation to the main axis of the Hotel "Marko Polo" (see: Ceraj, 2015) In that way the sea view was enabled for almost all rooms of the new hotel. The Hotel "Liburna" was designed in the period 1979-1980 (coauthors: Jovo Kukavičić, Zadranka Vitez, Uta Bernardi-Kukavičić and Dubravko Ježina.) In the first project of the interior design (1980-1981) coauthors were also J. Kukavičić and U. Bernardi-Kukavičić, while in the next additional program from the period 1984-1985 the coauthor was Zadranka Vitez. Besides, Vasko Lipovac made the decorations and sculpture in the main lobby while Vladimir Depolo show-cased some ship models in the salon.

Literature:

Bernardi, Bernardo (1973). Hotel "Marco Polo" u Korčuli. U: časopis "Čovjek i prostor: arhitektura, slikarstvo, kiparstvo i primijenjena umjetnost", 12=249, str. 6-7.

Bernardi, Bernardo (1974). Intervju za magazin Start od 13. veljače 1974.

Ceraj, Iva (2015). Bernardo Bernardi. Dizajnersko djelo arhitekta 1951-1985., Zagreb: Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti i Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti.

excerpt from Darko Fritz and Sonja Leboš, Interirror Standstill, exhibition cat., Galerija Bernardo Bernardi, Zagreb, 2020, n.p.