Legacy

Modernism as a set of values

It begins with clear construction, honest materials, collaboration, and a belief that design should serve people. This humanistic approach allows serially produced objects to carry presence and soul. Developed in our factory with like-minded designers, our products are shaped by structural logic, quality materials, and lasting comfort.

Legacy lives in this continuity - where ethics and aesthetics meet, and objects are designed to endure. It’s about carrying its intelligence forward.

Kontrapunkt recliner in the Revisiting Architecture editorial, filmed at the V. Lisinski Concert Hall, Zagreb - a landmark of modernist architecture.
Pavilion No. 40 at Zagreb Fair - a modernist building designed by architect Ivan Vitić, Zagreb Fair, 1956.

Our Modernist Design Continuum

 

In Zagreb, modernism was never only about buildings. It was a belief in clarity, collaboration, and design that serves people. Today, that thinking lives on in the objects of daily life — a chair, a table, a sofa. Furniture becomes architecture at human scale, carrying forward the same care for proportion, material honesty, and human comfort. Prostoria continues this story, rooted in regional memory and open to the world.

Revisiting Richter

Prostoria has developed for production furniture designs by Vjenceslav Richter, a Croatian modernist architect, artist, and visionary – designs that remained unrealised and unknown for decades. Working from original drawings, models, and archival material, the project develops five collections and twenty pieces through reconstruction, engineering, and in-house testing. 

Each piece is resolved as a usable object – adjusted for contemporary comfort, materials, and production standards while maintaining the structural logic of the original designs. In this way, Prostoria does not present Richter as history, but as an idea that lives on through furniture today.

Prostoria and Architecture

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Modernist architecture is still part of Zagreb’s everyday life. Buildings from the 1950s and 60s remain active parts of the city’s rhythm. Emerging from Croatia’s modernist heritage, Prostoria draws inspiration from architects such as Vjenceslav Richter, Ivan Vitić, Bernardo Bernardi, Marijan Haberle, and Niko Kralj. Their vision, uniting architecture, design, and art around human experience, continues to inform our approach to furniture, developed with the same attention to use, comfort, and everyday life.

Today, modernism's impressive architecture and grand gestures have transitioned to
focus on intimate projects of our daily life: Objects
Today, modernism's impressive architecture and grand gestures have transitioned to
focus on intimate projects of our daily life: Objects

– Numen/ForUse

Polygon — A Humanistic Modernism

Polygon was born at a moment of transition, when Prostoria began asking not only how something works, but what it stands for.

Designed by Numen / For Use and developed in close collaboration with our factory, Polygon reflects a humanistic view of modernism, one that believes even serially produced objects can carry presence and soul.

Its structure is visible. Honest. Its geometry follows the body, not convention.
Its comfort comes from precision and patience.

Read the conversation

Monk — Modernism as structural thinking

Monk began in architecture, designed for Hotel Dubrovnik Palace as part of a larger vision by 3LHD architects.

Created by studio Grupa and developed with Prostoria, it reflects modernism not as style, but as discipline — a belief in proportion, restraint, and natural logic.

Two curved plywood shells. Independent legs. A calm presence.

Discover the making of the Monk
Our reference to modernism was never formal. It was structural.
Our reference to modernism was never formal. It was structural.

- Studio Grupa

Design, Memory and the Value of Things

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  • “The legacy of well-made objects is something admirable. It carries education. It carries culture.”

    - Stefano Colli

In conversation with architect and collector Stefano Colli, we explore why certain pieces transcend time, not because they are rare, but because they carry meaning. When a connection forms, between object and person, something shifts. The piece becomes part of a story.

Carrying Forward

Continuity does not happen by accident. At Prostoria’s Croatian factory, research, design, and production exist side by side. Ideas are tested, materials explored, and prototypes refined until comfort feels right. What connects past and present is not imitation, but care - for structure, for material, and for the people who will live with these objects for years to come. Continuity is built, not declared.

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