Permeable, flexible and elegant. Market Gruž by ARP / Peračić-Veljačić

Dinko Peračić was born in Split in 1977, where he graduated from the Classical Gymnasium. He is an architect from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb (2001) and got his master’s degree at IAAC in Barcelona (2005). He is the founder of the Architects’ Collective Platforma 9.81 and a partner in Architects’ Office ARP. He has worked as an assistant at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Geodesy in Split since 2008, and in 2016, he was appointed an associate professor at the Architectural Design Department.

He is the author of a series of architectural projects, with a particular focus on public spaces and buildings, especially cultural facilities. Among the completed projects, notable ones include the Faculty of Civil Engineering building in Osijek, the Market and Fish Market in Vodice, and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka. Other projects, still unrealized, such as the Youth Center in Split, Pogon Jedinstvo in Zagreb, the Market in Dubrovnik, or the Olive House in Tisno, have been more prominently presented to the public.

In 2018, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Zagreb Salon of Architecture; in 2023, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Zagreb Salon of Applied Arts and design; and three times he was awarded the second prize of the Zagreb Salon (2006, 2009, 2015).   He was also awarded with Piranesi award in 2015, the Architecture Medal and Conceptual Design Medal by the Croatian Chamber of Architects (2016 and 2017). He was also awarded the Bernardo Bernardi Award by the Croatian Association of Architects in 2018 and the Grand Prix BIG SEE 2022.  His works were nominated for many other national and international awards.

He has extensive experience participating in architectural competitions and has won numerous awards. He has taken part in numerous domestic and international architectural and art exhibitions. Through the programs of the association Platforma 9,81, he is involved in various research and public activities related to spatial culture. He serves as a moderator at the Days of Oris symposium in Zagreb (alongside M. Mrduljaš). He was the curator of the Days of Architecture in Sarajevo in 2018. He actively contributes to the public discourse on space and architecture through frequent public lectures, discussions, workshops, actions, published texts, and by judging urban planning and architectural competitions. At the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, he represented Croatia as part of a team with M. Veljačić, E. Višnić, and S. Tolj with the work "we need it – we do it". Together with Miranda Veljačić, he held a solo exhibition at the 56th Zagreb Salon of Architecture.

Miranda Veljačić (born 1976, Zagreb) is a Croatian architect (from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb 2002), researcher, and cultural worker. She is a co-founder, coordinator, and current president of Platforma 9,81, one of the longest-lasting NGOs focused on architectural research and practice related to alternative and youth culture, activism, urbanism, and the heritage of modernity.

Veljačić was an editor of Oris and Čovjek i prostor, two major Croatian architecture magazines. In 2016, she represented Croatia at the Venice Biennale of Architecture together with Dinko Peračić, Emina Višnić, and Slaven Tolj.

In 1999, while still a student, Veljačić co-founded the architectural research association Platforma 9,81 in Zagreb with Dinko Peračić and Marko Sančanin, following their involvement with the European Architecture Students Assembly. She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb in 2002.

Since 2003, she has lived and worked in Split with her husband, Dinko Peračić, and their two children.

Platforma 9,81 is a Croatian collective of architects, theorists, designers, and urban planners operating as a non-governmental organisation that stimulates interdisciplinary debate on urban spaces, globalisation, and architectural practices. In addition to being documented online, its research was published in the 2004 book Superprivate. In 2011, the collective participated in the exhibition program Contemporary Art Archipelago, a series of site-specific works in the Turku archipelago in Finland.

Veljačić became a member of the presidency of the Association of Architects of Split in 2006 and a member of the programming committee of the Multimedia Cultural Center in Split. Her work focuses on research and elaboration for the preservation, protection, and promotion of modernist architecture, including the Senatorium in Krvavica by Rikard Marasović. In 2009, her collaborative work with Dinko Peračić on the revitalisation of the Youth Centre in Split won the Salon of Architecture Prize. This project completed work on the monumental building originally started in the 1970s by architect Frane Grgurević and left unfinished due to halted cultural funding. Over the course of 12 years, the architects reconfigured the structure, which had been squatted by various groups, to make it functional and give it a new purpose. She also co-developed, with Dinko Peračić, a project for the reconstruction of Tvornica Jedinstvo, a former factory in Zagreb, into the Regional Multifunctional Cultural Center Jedinstvo, which is still awaiting reconstruction.

At the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture, their collective project We Need – We Do It was documented in the catalogue Reporting from the Front, including the contribution “We need it – we do it: policy pragmatics and utopias,” as well as in the publication We Need It – We Do It, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia. The publication also discusses several other projects by Veljačić and her collaborators. In 2018, the project received the Grand Prize of the 53rd Zagreb Salon of Architecture.

Veljačić frequently speaks at international and local art events, presenting her architectural practice, most often in collaboration with Dinko Peračić, and advocating for public–civil partnerships and urban commons.