This book is an account of the peripheral moment, a highly productive decade of architectural experimentation in Croatia lodged between the violent break-up of Yugoslavia and that countries slow integration into the European Union. With the total collapse of existing urban planning regulations, severely reduced governmental building programs, and the lack of private patronage, architects were forced to develop a whole new host of design methodologies.

Ivan Rupnik guides the reader through the emergence of this bizarre and fascinating architectural scene on the very edge of united Europe, utilizing Ljubo Karaman's theory of the periphery as a distinct space of artistic production from that of the center or province, Manfredo Tafuri's concept of architectural experimentation, as well contemporary notions of agency. The account is framed using a variety of different lenses, including the observations of this moment by Kenneth Frampton, Aaron Betsky, Stefano Boeri, Manuel Gausa, and Hans Ibelings, through the atmosphere of the period as defined by Croatia's complex post-socialist/postwar identity and the subsequent positioning of the architectural profession vis-à-vis that context, the practices that emerged from this prolonged period of architectural experimentation, and through a series of discussions with some of the peripheral moment's primary agent provocateurs: 3LHD, njiric +, Randic - Turato, and STUDIO UP.