Over the last decade, Ivan Rupnik has engaged the complex context of post-socialist, postwar Croatia, through a series of projects that range from design as research to the research of design. Part of this work has led to two major publications, Project Zagreb: Transition as Condition, Strategy, Practice (Actar, 2007), coauthored with Eve Blau, and A Peripheral Moment: Experiments in Architectural Agency (Actar, 2010), developed through an intensive dialogue with local architects, and part of it has resulted in two ongoing design projects: an urban strategy for the University of Zagreb, developed with Bojan Baletic, Vice Rector for Spatial Planning and Development, and a new multi-sensory public landscape, also in Zagreb, designed in collaboration with Helena Paver Njiric, principle of hpnj+.

This research on a particular place has generated a series of theoretical and methodological techniques that Rupnik has applied to other contexts, including Slovenia, Portugal and Azerbaijan, and to other issues, such as the transfer of the tools and theories of scientific management’s ‘laboratory idea’ to architectural design practice, the subject of his doctoral work at Harvard University. Focusing on one case study from Project Zagreb and one design proposal for Zagreb, Rupnik will explain his evolving design/research methodology.

Ivan Rupnik is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University’s School of Architecture. He has held academic positions at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Syracuse University, Harvard University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Rupnik holds a BArch from Louisiana State University and an MArch with Distinction from Harvard University, where he is also currently completing his doctoral dissertation, titled Projecting (in) Space-Time: Scientific Management, Settlement-Building and Modern Architecture, 1918-1963, the first in-depth investigation of the transfer and translation of graphic projection tools and project management methods from industry to architectural design practice.

Since 2004, Rupnik has used the complex political, social and cultural context of Croatia as a site for studying the transformation and translation of models of architectural design practice and disciplinary agency. In 2012, Rupnik and a Portuguese architect and researcher, Ricardo Camacho, received a major European Union grant to investigate the role of tourism development as an instrument of urban rehabilitation in Dalmatia and the Algarve through an approach that combines conventional scholarship with design engagement. Since 2013, Rupnik has been a member of the Journal of Architectural Education editorial board, design committee, and more recently, as Associate Editor.