Almaški kraj is a specific part of the centre of Novi Sad, characteristic not onlz for its rich heritage, but also for the demonstrated resolution of its residents to preserve their neighbourhood. The Centre for Architecture Belgrade has been supporting the activities of NGO Almašani almost from their beginning.

During the last 10 years, Almašani have established themselves as one of the few important citizen initiatives, dedicated to protection of tangible and intangible heritage of the Almaški kraj. CAB is a long-standing partner in their activities, providing innovative urban design solutions, professional studies and researches for the area.

NGO Almašani has announced an ambitious programme of activities for 2015, with the Centre for Architecture as an active partner.

The Centre for Architecture Belgrade realized the Women in Architecture project during 2013. This book, as its result, showcases the work and experiences of women architects in Serbia since the beginning of the 20th century until today.

The 160 pages showcase illustrated texts and interviews on the most important female authors and their projects. The whole publication is bilingual, in Serbian and English language.

Asking questions on the position and role of women in architectural practice (now and in the past), we hope to enrich our profession in Serbia, and present to the global community the local architecture through the lens of its female authors.

The Centre for Architecture Belgrade owes special gratitude to our colleague Milena Zindović, for her great effort and enthousiasm in realization of our ideas.

We hereby thank the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, who financially supported the publication of this book.

To get your copy of this book, please contact the Centre for Architecture directly at books@cab.rs.

Branka Prpa et al., eds., To Live in Belgrade 1-6: Documents of Belgrade City Administration (Belgrade: Historical Archives of Belgrade, 2003-2008).

The heading of this text might have been just as well How I read the 3,000 pages that weren’t written to be read at all or Manual for urbanization of small oriental towns or The things they did not teach us in history classes or... let’s try that way:

How I read the 3,000 pages that weren’t written to be read at all

Unlike other publications presented here previously, this one happened by chance – or at least unplanned. Somebody telephoned me and said that the Historical Archives of Belgrade posted an information on their Facebook page, that said something like: “We hereby invite this gentleman to contact us, for he will, as the one-thousandth liker of our page, receive a gift.” Maybe it did not say liker, but something more decent; never mind. In communication with the kind officials of the Historical Archives, I have learned that they actually do wish to give me one of the books they published. From the list of available publications, I have recognized and selected, rather nasty, the books that I am writing about now. Books, since – unlike other offered items, this was a set of six hard-cover thick books. Still, until I picked up two full bags from the porter, I did not quite believe they would give me all six of them.

So I became the lucky winner. And I actually won selected documents from the archives of Belgrade City Administration, from the period 1837 to 1940. This collection of documents represents a radical example of the popular approach to history not as a listing of dates of great battles, but as the history of everyday life. Recently, several outstanding researches dealing with everyday life in Belgrade have been published – to mention only the books Cobblestone and Asphalt by Dubravka Stojanović [1] and Bazaars and Boulevards by Nataša Mišković [2] – but the stuff that I got was something else – the original material.

Documents were edited and prepared in a brutally modest way, just like contemporary bureaucrats mass-produce them today using MS Word. But it is exactly their rough appearance, with archive numbers and formal sections without real meaning, that makes these books romantic. One can imagine big-moustached clerks writing these documents – beginning with ornamented handwriting, that turns by the end into an illegible line bending between spilled ink dots. The contents of these documents, just like their appearance, varies from precise lists and grotesque apologetic pleads to higher instances, to quickly or lazily scribbled reports on how there was nothing to report. Scribes, policemen, pleaders, strict administrators, engineers- dreamers and worried doctors managed to fill the rigid form of the official correspondence with all the liveliness of Belgrade as it was then, its problems, smells, changes.

I have read the complete contents of all six volumes from beginning to the end without skipping pages (like a madman reads the phone book, as Bogdan Tirnanić would say). I went through the pages hastily, with a suspicious-looking smile, like a high-school boy looking at porn – enchanted with the stuff he sees and impatient to learn something even more interesting on next pages.

Manual for urbanization of small oriental towns

Among the documents included in this selection, besides notes on happy or morbid trivial situations, there is a substantial amount of data on people and events that essentially influenced the development of Belgrade and the transformation of its parts, streets and the way of life into something we can recognize. Those are the most valuable and for us the most interesting parts.

Changes can be tracked on multiple levels through time – from language changes, with gradual replacement of Turkish words with new ones, that we know or at least understand, to notes on actual realizations of these new ideas, represented by new words (tramway, public lighting, pavement, photography and telegraph slowly take the place of once so important terms, like seymen, gümrük or haraç).

One can learn a lot from these texts about the ways of dealing with various problems that the citizens and city administration faced during the construction and maintenance of infrastructure systems, tracing and paving of streets, reconstruction of whole quarters, establishing communal order. While we find some of described situations funny, it is astonishing to understand how in fact not much has changed. Therefore, notes on experiences of policemen and engineers from the beginning of the XIX century can be useful as directions for prevention or overcoming of contemporary challenges in planning and managing of public spaces.

The things they did not teach us in history classes

Books like these draw our attention to the fact that they taught us a lot in school, but we actually did not learn anything, at least not anything that really means something, or can be implemented. A hundred years old documents of city administration sometimes contain actual useful data, but they tell us much more about the spirit of that time and the spirit of the city, as well as about the values that some Belgradians of the past tried to reach or protect, and hoped that we shall protect, too.

[1] Dubravka Stojanović, Cobblestone and Asphalt: Urbanization and Europeanization of Belgrade1890-1914 (in Serbian: Kaldrma i asfalt: Urbanizacija i evropeizacija Beograda 1890-1914.) (Belgrade: Society for social history, 2009).

[2] Nataša Mišković, Bazaars and Boulevards: The World of Life in 19th Century Belgrade (in Serbian: Bazari i bulevari: Svet života u Beogradu 19. veka (Belgrade: Belgrade City Museum, 2009).

Text: Goran Petrović.
Illustrations from CAB archives.

Centre for Architecture Belgrade supports the initiative of BINA festival under the title KNOCK ON WOOD. We believe this pavilion will be a place that will trigger many creative initiatives in the future, a place for students to meet, discuss, create and act.

During this year's 9th Belgrade International Week of Architecture a special program KNOCK ON WOOD took place. Through the student workshops and lecture series with participants from Norway, Denmark and Finland we have addressed the potentials and challenges of building with wood. The last part of this program is a construction of a temporary wooden pavilion located at the courtyard of the University of Arts in Belgrade - BINA KABINA 2014.

The pavilion was designed by Norwegian architecture office Brendeland & Kristoffersen with the assistance of architecture students from Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and Faculty for Art and Design (FUD), Megatrend University.

This temporary structure will serve as a workshop, a classroom, a place to study, exhibit, lecture and make all kind of projects opened to all students interested.

BINA, Asscoation of Belgrade Architects, Faculty of Architecture and University of Arts joined forces to make this pavilion happen.

The pavilion is currently under the construction and the opening is planned in September 2014.

So far the BINA team gathered 80% of funds needed for its construction. Hereby we would like to ask you to help build this pavilion and collect the remaining funds needed. By being a part of this project you will help spread the design and creativity discourse further.

Lets make this project happen together!

Please read about KNOCK ON WOOD here:

http://www.ulule.com/knock-on-wood/

 

Summer school of architecture takes place in Kotor again this year, traditionally in a prison where, probably, we all belong. Architecture Prison Summer School 2014 deals with the research of possibilities for transformation of spaces around Hotel Fjord as the trigger for urban reconstruction of a part of Kotor. Mentors will work on this task with students from different European architecture schools. The team of offices behind the concept of GH Fjord Study and Program for APSS 2013 and APSS 2014 has been appointed for a curatorial team for Montenegin national pavilion in Venice Biennale. Exhibition Treasures in Disguise – Montenegro pavilion is curated by Dijana Vučinić (DVARP), Boštjan Vuga (SADAR+VUGA), Simon Hartmann (HHF), Ilka and Andreas Ruby (Ruby Press) and Nebojša Adžić (SACG). The Montenegro Pavilion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale presents four examples of late-modernist architecture that were built in Montenegro between 1960 and 1986. When these buildings were first constructed, they radiated their builders’ enthusiasm and confidence about the new society they were building. Only a few decades later, these buildings embody the complete opposite: poorly used and maintained, they are a testament to the failure of modernism. Nobody seems to be able to recognize any value in them; hence, their fate seems sealed: decay and demolition. One of these buildings is Hotel Fjord. APSS will discuss these issues and start a debate among people from Montenegro and professionals from all over the world. Joining of these initiatives – the design study for Hotel Fjord, the Summer School, the Montenegro Pavilion, all aims to initiate a powerful development impulse for the whole city of Kotor.

Nataša Danilović Hristić: Safety in Urban Spaces, in Serbian (Belgrade: Orion art, 2013). The book Safety in Urban Spaces is the result of the PhD thesis of Mrs. Danilović Hristić, providing a scientific definition of the criteria for safety in urban public spaces. Although the subject is fundamentally related to sociology, politicology, psychology and criminology, it becomes important in everyday functioning of the cities and, thus, important in processes of planning, design and urban design in general. This publication gives the definition of the term safety and also offers the strategy for providing safety in public urban spaces. The research was based on the analysis of safety in Belgrade, from social and economic aspect. As a result, recommendations and guides for providing safety through urban planning are defined. Besides the practical contribution to clarifying the problem of safety, we emphasize the significance of the scientific importance of establishing the relation between this issue and city urban system. The topic of safety in public urban spaces is much discussed on global level, through present and frequent fascination with measures for prevention in reduction of urban violence and terrorism effects, while the personal sense of safety is on top of list of demands when it comes to evaluation of the quality of urban life and competitiveness of cities and settlements.

Author of the rewiew: Darko Polić.

The topic of this year's Belgrade International Architecture Week is Public Spaces, where through a series of different programs visitors and lecturers will investigate the content, meaning, the interactive nature and formal values which define urban spaces. Centre for Architecture Belgrade participates in this year's BINA with three events.

On Friday May 16, in Artget gallery of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade took place the lecture Why public space?, a presentation of the European Prize for Urban Public Space. This prize is a biennial competition that aims to encourage and recognize  the creation, recovery and improvement of public space in the understanding that the state of public space is a clear indicator of the civic and collective health of our cities. The program is organized by the Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona (CCCB).

At BINA the European Prize for Urban Public Space was presented by David Bravo Bordas from CCCB and Darko Polić from CAB. The event was moderated by Ivan Kucina.

Among the BINA workshops program,  Milena Zindović from CAB and Katarina Aleksić, informatics teacher, will hold the workshop Women as Belgrade Builders for children of age 10 to 12.  The workshop is scheduled for Thursday May 29 from 10:00to 11:30 am, and of Friday  May 30 from 10:30am to 12:00 pm, in the space of the Center for Promotion of Science in Knez Mihaila Street 5.

The workshop participants will work in groups to explore elements of urban public space using simple Web tools, as well as present their findings in the form of interactive images, interactive timelines and mind maps. Through their work and dialogue with moderators, the children will get acquainted with the history of Belgrade and its public spaces, significance of architecture and urban design in development of the city, as well as with works of our women architects. The workshop will be based on the principles of peer education since the children participating will be helped by their peers from "Branislav Nušić" Primary School, who have already successfully completed similar tasks during the educational project Women as Belgrade Builders.

All children's work will be published on the project's blog.

In collaboration and by invitation from Do.Co.Mo.Mo Serbia, Milena Zindović together with Marijom Martinović will guide the BINA walk Banks of Sava River and What Connects Them. On Sunday June 1, starting at 2 pm from Beton Hala, the group will board a boat to travel on the Sava river and talk about its banks, important urban ambiances such as Savamala, the Sava amphitheater and Old Fairground, and buildings such as the "May 25" sports center, the Belgrade Fair, BIGZ etc.

The Centre for Architecture Belgrade is proud to have a series of studies on housing research in our archive, prepared by the former Centre for Housing of the IMS Institute.
Today's researchers may find at first that these studies, prepared and published around 30 years ago, seem a bit obsolete or too formal and mathematically precise. One should, however, have in mind that the final result of several years of work on these studies was the publication Conditions and technical normatives for design of residential buildings and apartments (so-called red book), a set of rules and regulations that defined the minimum a space must comply to, later implemented in the realization of residential buildings and estates by all means significantly better than the contemporary production.
Today, as the construction of social housing is once again in focus, with savings in all steps of the process of design and construction, we turn to these researches, and the standards imposed by their authors may help the designers now.

Attached is the list of available studies, apartment plan catalogues and proceedings, mainly prepared by the Centre for housing (in Serbian):

Bešlić, Vukica, Čanak, Mihailo: Standardizacija dimenzija sanitarne i kuhinjske opreme u stanu, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1974.
Čanak, Mihailo, Luković, Zorana: Uporedna analiza funkcionalnih mogućnosti skeletnih sistema i sistema sa poprečnim nosećim zidovima, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1978.
Čanak, Mihailo, Utvrđivanje upotrebne vrednosti konstruktivnih sistema, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1983.
Čanak, Mihailo: Ekonomske posledice projektantskih odluka, I deo, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1983.
Čanak, Mihailo: Funkcionalna koncepcija stanova u IMS sistemu, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1974.
Čanak, Mihailo: Funkcionalni aspekti konstrukcije stambenih zgrada, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1979.
Čanak, Mihailo: Funkcionalni aspekti opreme stana, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1973.
Čanak, Mihailo: Funkcionalni aspekti organizacije stana, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1973.
Čanak, Mihailo: Funkcionalni aspekti stambenih zgrada i stanova: Model vrednovanja projektantskih mogućnosti konstruktivnih sistema CS'84.K, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1984.
Čanak, Mihailo: Industrijsko oblikovanje i proizvodnja komponenata skeletnog sistema: Funkcionalna koncepcija stanova u IMS sistemu, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1975.
Čanak, Mihailo: Uticaj organizacije stana na upotrebnu vrednost stambenog prostora, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1974.
Čanak, Mihailo: Vrednovanje kvaliteta u stambenoj izgradnji i stanovanju, doktorska disertacija, Arhitektonski fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu, 1983.
Fototeka stanova, Beogradska naselja Kijevo - Kneževac, Sveska I, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1983.
Fototeka stanova, Centralna zona Novog Beograda I, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1978.
Fototeka stanova, Centralna zona Novog Beograda II, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1979.
Fototeka stanova, Fleksibilni stan II, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1981.
Fototeka stanova, Novi Beograd, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1980.
Gavrilović, Branka, Janković, Ivan, Petrovar, Ksenija, Čanak, Mihailo: Model vrednovanja stanova i stambenih zgrada CS'80, II deo: Kvalitet stambene zgrade, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1980.
Gavrilović, Branka: Funkcionalni aspekti veličine stana, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1973.
Izgradnja, posebno izdanje, Stan i stanovanje
Izgradnja, vanredni broj, Inpros, 1973.
Janković, Božidar: Priručnik za projektovanje višespratnih kolektivnih stambenih zgrada u montažnom sistemu IMS sa pregledom tipologije rešenja, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1992.
Janković, Ivan: Metodologija izrade prostornih standarda stana i zgrade, I deo, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1981.
Karadžić, Branislav: Objekti društvenog standarda u montažnom skeletnom sistemu IIM, Institut za ispitivanje materijala SRS, 1966.
Kara-Pešić, Živojin, Janković, Ivan, Gavrilović, Branka: Koncept novog naselja, tom 2, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1979.
Kara-Pešić, Živojin: Fleksibilnost i stanovanje, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1977.
Kovačević, Slobodan: Bibliografsko istraživanje literature o modelima sa osvrtom na modele aplikativne u industrijalizovanom načinu gradnje, seminarski rad, postdiplomske studije iz urbanizma, Arhitektonski fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu, 1973.
Kovačević, Slobodan: Korišćenje stambenih struktura u objektima koje su realizovali članovi poslovnog udruženja Inpros iz Beograda, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1973.
Ksenija Petovar: Model programiranja stambenih struktura, I i II deo, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1980/1981.
Naučno-stručni skup: Kvalitet stanovanja i ljudske potrebe, Centar za stanovanje IMS, Zavod za zgradarstvo IGH, Gradbeni centar Slovenije, 1979.
Naučno-stručni skup: Položaj učesnika u stambenoj izgradnji, Centar za stanovanje IMS, Zavod za zgradarstvo IGH, Gradbeni centar Slovenije, 1983.
Priručnik za primenu građevinskih sistema, materijala i elemenata u stambenom fondu JNA, Sveska 1, Institut za ispitivanje materijala SRS, 1988.
Priručnik za primenu građevinskih sistema, materijala i elemenata u stambenom fondu JNA, Sveska 2, Institut za ispitivanje materijala SRS, 1988.
Privremeni standard stana usmerene stambene izgradnje, Gradbeni centar Slovenije, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1974.
Savetovanje: Utvrđivanje upotrebne vrednosti stanova, Gradbeni centar Slovenije, 1971.
Standardi za projektovanje stanova i stambenih zgrada, Centar za stanovanje IMS, 1980.

Workshop Women as Belgrade Builders  which Centre for Architecture Belgrade realized in cooperation with Belgrade Elementary School  “Branislav Nušić” is successfully finished, and this occasion was marked by a visit with the pupils to the subject city sites.

During this tour, guided by Milena Zindović and Katarina Aleksić, the pupils visited buildings by architects Jelisaveta Načić, Milica Šterić and Milica Krstić in dowtown Belgrade. The visit started in front of the Elementary School “Kralj Petar Prvi” building by Jelisaveta Načić, where we spoke on elements of this building's style, as well as architectural elements in general.   In front of Jelisaveta's Small steps in Kalemegdan the pupils presented the life and work of the first Serbian woman architect.  We also talked about architecture as a profession and a framework for everyday life.

The walk continued towards Zeleni Venac and the buildings of architect Milica Šterić, with a stop in front of the restaurant “?” and the House of princess Ljubica, two examples of traditional Balkan architecture. The conversation continued on the topic of city planing and importance of urbanism as a discipline.

In Carica Milica Street we stopped opposite the EPS office building by architect Milica Šterić and talked about the aesthetic of Modernism, proportions and life and work of Milica Šterić, longtime director of  Energoprojekt Architecture and Urbanism.

The tour ended with the visit to Electrical Technical School "Nikola Tesla", former Secong High School for Girls by architect Milice Krstić. Thanks to the hospitality of this school's professors and secretary we visited the interior of this complex building - the library, ceremonial hall, terrace and laboratories. During the visit to the school the pupils presented their findings and work on the topics of elements of Serbian-Byzantine style, life and work of Milica Krstić, as well as the status of women in Serbia in the 19th and the beginning of 20th century.

All of the pupils' works and a detailed report of the sites visit can be found at the blog Women as Belgrade Builders, and will also be exhibited in two locations during the coming Belgrade International Architecture Week  from 8th to 31st May 2014.

Centre for Architecture Belgrade would like to thank the enthusiasm and creativity of teacher Katarina Aleksić, the cooperation of Elementary School  “Branislav Nušić” and the support of the Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute of Belgrade for the successful realization of this workshop. Photos: Katarina Aleksić

Milena Vukmirović, PhD, Executive Coordinator of the Places and Technologies 2014 conference, reveals for CAB blog some first-hand information on authors and topics that await us at this event.

What is the number of submitted papers and what kind of interest have domestic and foreign experts shown for this event?

A total of 126 papers have been submited, signed by 248 authors and co-authors; the figures show the seriousness of the event. Of this number, 53 papers were sent by colleagues from abroad, so the interest for the conference is evenly distributed among domestic and foreign experts.

As for the participants from Serbia, we may say that the papers come from the majority of registered universities in our country: Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš, Novi Pazar etc. On the other hand, the largest number of papers from abroad were submitted by researchers from the region  (Croatia, Montenegro, FYR Macedonia, Albania, Republic of Srpska (BIH), Romania, Bulgaria), although a significant number of papers also came from  Italy, Austria, Turkey and Great Britain.

Are you satisfied with the diversity of papers, considering the multidisciplinary approach of the conference? What topics did the authors recognize as the most interesting? What topics and authors do you announce as an outstanding contribution to the conference?

The multidisciplinary concept of the conference is confirmed through papers belonging to different research domains. The majority belongs to the domain of urban planning, architectural technologies and architecture in general, but we also have papers dealing with traffic, civil engineering and geodesy, electrotechnics, mechanical engineering and a certain number of researches belonging to social and humanist sciences.

Having in mind the topics of the conference, the majority of the papers responded to the topic of urban design and technologies, innovative materials, systems and technologies and the topic of green building and green strategies and technologies.

What are the expected direct results of the conference and how are they going to be prepared and presented to the participants and the public? How do you plan to continue the activities started with this conference?

All submitted and accepted papers will be published in the digital proceedings, accessible on-line, and open for broader public. Besides this, Cambridge Scholar Publishing plans to publish a scientific monography. A thematic issue of the Energy and Building scientific journal will also be prepared. Both of these publications are envisaged as a sort of a follow-up of the conference.

Also, our plan is to organize this conference once in every two years, so the sequel of these activities can be expected in 2016.

The first international academic conference Places and Technologies 2014 will be held at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade on April 3rd and 4th 2014. The Centre for Architecture Belgrade is the official new media partner.