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.

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.

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.

The first international academic conference Places and Technologies 2014 was held at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade on April 3rd and 4th 2014.

The Centre for Architecture Belgrade was the official new media partner. Also, we presented two papers entitled “The Impact of Smart Home Technologies on Architectural Design” and “Google Earth as a Microworld”.

We have prepared an abridged version of a text on the diagram at the service of arhitecture – and the other way around, by Nevena Novaković, previously published in Prostor magazine, entitled Dijagramatična arhitektura (Diagrammatic Architecture, in Serbian).

Industrial society may be said to have most particularly been marked by change in how humans perceive time. Sanford Kwinter’s definition of this change is an evocative one: The once imperceptibly slow and stable rhythms of history that earlier furnished a kind of immobile ground for the more labile and fluid human figure began to oscillate and vary in pattems of shorter and shorter duration, effecting an epochal reversal in social and historical experience. What once appeared as a fixed and global continuum subtending human temporal experience – the historicomaterial assemblage, for example, known as ‘the city’ – began to multiply, mutate, and atomize so quickly and finely that it itself could no longer be conceived as anything other than a turbulent, punctuated fluid. [1]

Apart from the passing of time becoming more accelerated, inescapably imposing greater speeds on the quality of living today, another phenomenon has come to mark contemporary urban environments, that of data storm, of the incessant flow of information altering social patterns, typical urban activities and the organisation of cities. [2] All these changes as to how space and time are perceived and experienced pose fundamental questions before the stakeholders considering, planning and designing cities. What is the right course of action in the ever-faster changing social and spatial context? This question is a good place to enter into a discussion of the relationship between architecture and the diagram.

The term diagrammatic architecture was first used by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito in 1996 in a text in which he interprets the architecture of famous Kajuyo Sejima. Ito’s verdict is that the power and delicacy of Sejima’s architecture arise from the close similarity between the buildings themselves and the scale drawings representing them. Here works of architecture become one or merge with the diagrams, as the diagrams showing spatial functions are transformed into constructed spatial forms. [3]

Figure 1. Kazujo Sejima, medium-height residential building, design prototype, roof and floor plans, 1995.

Several years after Ito opened the contemporary diagram debate, architect Peter Eisenman published a book entitled Diagram Diaries. The book is a review of Eisenman’s designs dating back to 1970, in which he expounds on the modus operandi of architectural design. [4] Eisenman’s essays are richly illustrated with graphic appendices, and together they explain his diagrammatic approach to architecture, in which architectural structures and their contexts go through iterations in diagram form. It was the first time for Robert Somol, author of the book foreword, that the diagram became synonymous with architecture, and not simply its representation. According to Somol, the diagram is an implement of architectural production and discourse generation, which operates between form and words, space and language. This makes the diagram performative rather than representational. [5]

Figure 2. Peter Eisenman, Diagrams of transformation of House IV, 1971.

Robert Somol links the increasing focus of architectural theory and practice on the diagram to the 1960’s and the new phase in how architectural profession was perceived. Somol claims that the basic techniques and methods of architectural knowledge changed in the second half of the 20th century, transforming from the drawing to the diagram. [6] The diagram grew in importance in what may be called the information age. Swimming against the current of information, the architect is faced with the necessity to make selections, define priorities and opt for the best ways in which to use the selected. Previously, information had always been seen as a subcategory; now, it became the actual subject matter.

Figure 3. www.chora.org

According to Anthony Vidler, the diagram is one element or ingredient shared by the wholly distinct phenomena or projects of architecture and town planning. Designs done on paper, those created in digital space and actual, constructed buildings, to which such words are associated as topography, map, event-space, morphogenesis and process, have one common feature: they are all generated and represented using digital technologies. The diagram is their second common feature, says Vidler, one they also share with the modernist avant-garde, their common predecessor. [7] Unlike Somol, Vidler traces the origins of the diagram back to a much earlier period. He discovers them in the early modern period, when architectural drawings became abstract, and whose geometric linearity and simplicity pushed for diagrammatic representation. Vidler illustrates the early use of the diagrammatic drawing with Durand’s (Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand) new methods of representation, as used at the École polytechnique opened in Paris in 1785. Durand’s drawings consisted of series of lines, points and planes and contained no decorative details. Such simplified drawings were meant to point to that which is essential about architecture. [8]

Vidler’s narrative takes us to 20th-century modern architecture, more precisely, to Le Corbusier, who said his architectural concepts were an extension to classicist principles – formal Greek order, ancient Romans’ institutional and typological heritage, and the proportional systems of the 16th- and 17th-century modern French Classicists. [9] This is how diagrammatic architecture reached its apex in modernism. The abstract form promoted by modern architecture, which shied away from all decoration, was accused in the 1960’s of being sterile and drastically reduced, of being alien to man. Vidler finds common ground for all criticism of modernist architecture: too literal a transposition of new graphic techniques into physical form. Architecture literally looked like the geometric shapes that were used to design and present it in visual form on paper. [10] This leads to the following question, in light of what is stated above: can modern architecture be called diagrammatic architecture? If so, can Kazujo Sejima’s work be labeled modernist? Does the modernist drawing indeed possess all the characteristics of diagrams, or its similarity to the diagram does not extend beyond abstraction?

The diagram may also serve as a tool to understand the architecture that is already out there or, as Douglas Graf puts it, as a tool of interpretation. In regard to this, however, an object may never be fully comprehended or known. An architectural object may be seen as an array of abstractions, reductions, as a series of segments and boundaries which are manifested simultaneously and which are prone to expansion and contraction, never letting the eye settle on what it sees and constantly eliciting revisions. [11] Our analysis of architectural objects would greatly benefit from an instrument which would allow us to simultaneously move back and forth between contradicting views – those of typologies defining programmes on the one hand, and those defining form on the other; between the distinct qualities of an object and the general qualities of architecture; between cognition and perception as two discrete processes; between the dynamic quality of function and the static quality of composition. It is precisely the diagram that is capable of this. Thus, it develops its own inherent characteristics through aspects of binary oppositions. The content suggested by a diagram is preliminary and transitory. By means of its continuous debate between oppositions, the diagram reveals weaknesses, insecurity and originality, thus assuming revisionary authority in the process of interpretation. [12] If modernist graphic representations possess the characteristics of the diagram, then the diagrammatic quality, or rather the potential of the diagram for a great number of possibilities and combinations of architectural positions, is wasted as the diagram, being a graphic presentation, is literally transposed into physical space.

Figure 4. Plan diagram – structure of events in space. Rem Koolhaas, Melun-Senart urban design, 1987.

Toilet groups mutate into Disney Store then morph to become meditation center: successive transformations mock the word plan. The plan is a radar screen where individuals pulses survive for unpredictable periods of time in a Bacchanalian free-for-all… In this standoff between the redundant and the inevitable, a plan would actually make matters worse, drive you to instant despair. Only the diagram gives a bearable version. There is zero loyalty – and zero tolerance – toward configuration, no original condition; architecture has turned into a time-lapse sequence to reveal a permanent evolution… [13]

Finally, why do architects like diagrams? The diagram debate in contemporary architecture concerns several major issues: that of the relation between architectural representation and the process of design, and also of the strategy of architectural-urban design in the context of continuous, rapid change at all levels and of all aspects of the urban environment, as vividly described by Koolhas. Essentially, the actualisation of the diagram in contemporary architecture and town planning is intricately linked to the accessibility of the wealth of information which the architect must understand and format. The previously mentioned dual nature of the diagram, with its ability to simultaneously make references in two domains, that of the general and of the specific, singles the diagram out as a valuable reflective tool in the field of architecture. The diagram allows the architect, researcher, to identify and visually analyse discrete elements of a problem, theory, idea or physical object, while maintaining a holistic view of it.

Diagrams are visualisations of the thinking process, in which one image is not merely a representation of a fixed intellectual or physical state, but rather of a number of possible options and combinations of attributes juxtaposed, as binary oppositions, by the diagram. They are single graphic representations that allow the consideration of a great number of combinations and relations, i.e., that encapsulate a whole range of possibilities inherent in the thinking process, allowing the architect to carefully balance between the ideational and visual, dynamic and static.

…the diagram is the possibility of fact – It is not the fact itself. [14]

REFERENCES

1. Stanford Kwinter, “The Reinvention of Geometry”, Introduction to “Urbanism after Innocence: Four Projects,” by Rem Koolhaas, Assemblage 18 (1992): 8.

3. http://www.archplus.net/download/artikel/1064/‎ (accessed on 23 November 2013)

2. Raoul Bunschoten, “Urban Gallery, Urban Curation”, CHORA – Urban and Architectural Research Laboratory.

http://www.chora.org/1990/Interview2.pdf 

3. Anthony Vidler, “Diagrams of Diagrams: Architectural Abstraction and Modern Representation”, Representations 72 (2000): 1-20.

4. Ibid, 17.

5. R.E. Somol, “Dummy Text, or the Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture”, Introduction to Diagram Diaries, by Peter Eisenman, 7-25. (New York: Universe Publishing, 1999).

6. R.E. Somol, “Dummy Text, or the Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture”.

7. Anthony Vidler, “Diagrams of Diagrams: Architectural Abstraction and Modern Representation”.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Douglas Graf, “Diagrams”, Perspecta 22 (1986): 42-71.

12. Ibid.

13. Rem Koolhas, AMOMA and &&&, Content, 167. (Tachen, 2004).

14. Gilles Deleuze, “The Diagram”, in The Deleuze Reader, Constantin V. Boundas, ed.: 199. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

ILLUSTRATION SOURCES

Anthony Vidler, “Diagrams of Diagrams: Architectural Abstraction and Modern Representation”, Representations 72 (2000): 4.

Rem Koolhaas, “Urbanism after Innocence: Four Projects,” Assemblage 18 (1992): 88.

Other: www.chora.org

Nevena Novaković work as a senior teaching assistant at the Chair of Urban Planning

at the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Banjaluka, from where she graduated in 2003 at the Department of Architecture. She is currently a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade.

The first international academic conference Places and Technologies 2014 will be held at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade on April 3^rd and 4^th 2014, with the aim to explore and present papers, studies and projects dealing with the improvement of city spaces using technologies. The conference is organized in partnership between the Faculty of Architecture Belgrade, UrbanLab and the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, and the official new media partner of the conference will be the  Centre for Architecture Belgrade.

The Places and Technologies 2014 conference will showcase research from the domains of Urban design, Urban planning, Design and management, Industrial and architectural design, Architectural and building technologies. From social aspect, the conference will deal with historical and philosophical component to high tech, urban sociology, innovations, ICT, as well as elements of transportation enhanced by technology up to geodesy and cartography and the ways technologies improve these fields (GIS).

The conference focus is sustainability in urban design, and it will consider social networks and microblogging, usage of technology in urban furniture, new innovative materials, high tech and high touch solutions. A hundred participants are anticipated, and around 30 experts from Europe working in the field of high technologies in both scientific and professional terms, have confirmed they participation, together with special professional guests.

Conference participants will have the opportunity to hear presentations by dr Milica Bajić Brković, tenure professor, president of ISOCARP – global association of professional planners; dr Jan Belis from Belgium who is a leading expert in structural glass applications and president of COST project; dr Stefan van der Spek from Netherlands, who works in interior design and topics such as intermodal transferpoints and  human hub;  dr Manfred Schrenk from the  Central European Institute of Technology in Austria, planner and GIS expert; and professor  Phil Jones from UK who is an expert in energy efficiency and teaches in Malesia, China and Hong Kong.

Besides key note speakers, the conference will feature special professional guests such as Jean-Louis Frechin from the leading French design company noDesign which deals with high tech and is working on projects from the French government, Citroen, Renault etc; dr Marija Todorović, electrical engineer and tenure professor whose field of expertise includes sustainable energy and green building with the use of solar power; dr Andjelka Mihajlov, sustainability expert, scientist and tenure professor at the University in Novi Sad, who leads the department for inclusion of the Western Balkans in the European flows of sustainability at the Ministry of sustainable development and urban planning; and Rade Milić, archaeologist and president of Center for urban development that realizes innovative projects for the protection of cultural heritage in Belgrade and Serbia. Technical director of the conference is Eva Vaništa Lazarević, PhD, tenure professor of the Faculty of Architecture, Belgrade University.

The choice of keynote speakers, guests and participants of the conference speaks of the organizers intentions to encourage networking and cooperation between institutions, corporations and experts, form potential for future bilateral international cooperation, open current topics to young researchers and create a platform for knowledge exchange. The deadline for abstract submission is December 10^th, and detailed requirements can be found at the conference official Web site.

Centre for Architecture Belgrade completed a series of articles with the topic Women in Architecture, which were published on our blog during September and October. Through 15 features published in this series we tried to start a conversation about the female authors in Serbian architecture and draw attention to the successful architects who worked and work in our country.

The article series received positive reactions from both the professional as well as the general public, and moved from virtual to real space thanks to the cooperation with Blok Conference, during which a discussion on Women in Architecture was held. The participants were some of the architects featured in the Centre for Architecture’s initiative, as well as special guests. Žaklina Gligorijević, Eva Vaništa Lazarević, Grozdana Šišović, Dubravka Đukanović, Bojana Ibrajter Gazibara, Zorica Savičić and Špela Leskovic spoke at the discussion, while the conversation was moderated by Milena Zindović.

The discussion was organized by Centre for Architecture with the aim of establishing a relation between the global context where the female contribution to the architectural profession has been undergoing a revaluation for some time now, and the local context in which the same principles and questions can be identified. Considering this initiative by Centre for Architecture Belgrade is a pioneer attempt to explore the topic of female authorship in local architecture, the outcome was very uncertain.

Since the project arose great interest with the participants as well as the general public, Centre for Architecture wanted to deepen and additionally clarify some of the opinions related in the interviews and the various stands the participants took, in a form of an open debate. In positive atmosphere the guests talked about their experiences from the practice, answered questions and related conflicting opinions. Some of the topics of discussion were Jelisaveta Načić, Milica Šterić, having or lacking an ego, working in couples, working in smaller or larger teams, with male or female colleagues. At the end the audience interacted as well.

All participants emphasized the importance of good and quality architecture above all, as well as the pitfalls of generalization of certain principles as masculine or feminine. The question on whether we need a female gender for the professional title served as a conclusion that the words architecture and architect already are female – which certainly makes a good base for the continuation of the research.

We would like to thank all those who participated, contributed and followed our initiative. The importance of this topic certainly exceeds the limits of this first project and the Centre for Architecture Belgrade will continue to engage with, research and support women in architecture.

Photos: Vanja Petrović