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.

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.

As the Western masters have been studied thoroughly in the past (information on architects and their work was easily accessible, for various reasons, such as the longevity and marketing skills of the most prominent figures and the large number of their students and followers), contemporary researchers of the Modern turn to the less-known field of former socialist Europe, USSR and the so-called third world countries.

In the last few years, younger generation of researches worked quite a lot on the subject of architectural heritage of former Yugoslavia. In different ways, with different approaches. The largest research was definitely the Unfinished Modernisations, a project that gathered participants from all countries of the former Yugoslavia, and presented in public on several occasions, through conferences and exhibitions in a number of cities in the region.

Project results have been compiled and published in a book of the same title. This publication includes an impressive number of papers by respected authors, dealing with the modern architecture and urban planning of the former state in the context of social relations, technology, architectural expression, local particularities, influences, languages, interactions, ideologies, communication…

The editors, Maroje Mrduljaš and Vladimir Kulić, very wisely distanced themselves from possible objections: “…in no way [do we] pretend to write a coherent history of modern architecture in the region… we are not aiming at scholarly precision and comprehensiveness, but a broad description of the circumstances that produced certain pieces of architecture and of the modernising effects of these buildings and their significance today.“ If we accept such an approach to research, what follows after this introduction is an unbelievable amount of data, illustrations, speculation, comments and analyses, presenting an extraordinary result. And a lot of nostalgia.

Many designs, buildings and authors, shown here, were previously unknown to broader audiences. Indisputable values, discovered and presented by this project, thus escape the danger of oblivion. On the other hand, the project gives us a new discourse on some well-known houses, spaces and people, who deserve to be discussed and who still have something to tell us.

I personally am very glad that yet another research of this topic has been successfully realized. From the moment when Jelica and Jelena made their first timid inquiries, over the broad smile on their faces as they investigated the dust of our archives, to the well-designed papers, it certainly took a lot of persistence and work – and they should be congratulated for that. This text is illustrated with some of the pictures from our archive, published in this book.

Finally, we believe that this outstanding project will initiate some new researches, leading to an impartial catalogization and valorization of building heritage of the Modern, as a necessary prerequisite for its (urgently needed) protection. Modernizations may be unfinished, but we must not let them stay elusive.

Text: Goran Petrović
Illustrations from CAB archives: Fragment of the facade of the so-called TV-building (Blok 23, New Belgrade) and Pilot-building of the IMS Building Technology in Havana, Cuba.

This book represents the first comprehensive framing and treatment of the most important new development in Danish architecture of the 2000s. In the first years after 2000, a young generation of architects hit Danish architecture with renewed energy.

“The New Wave in Danish Architecture” explores the turn through interviews with architects and key stakeholders, essays and presentations of the architects and their works. The book explores how these young Danish architectural offices gained a foothold on the Danish and the international architectural scene in the 2000s with Danish office PLOT/BIG as first mover.

Among the 12 architectural firms portrayed and featured in the book are PLOT, BIG, JDS, COBE, Transform, Nord, EFFEKT, Adept and others. Comprehensive interviews with Bjarke Ingels (BIG), Winy Maas (MVRDV), Shohei Shigematsu (OMA), Julien De Smedt (JDS), Dan Stubbergaard (COBE) and many more.

The projects of the young Danish offices share certain key commonalities: a new pragmatism, a new willingness to engage in dialog with the world, and a new freshness and straightforwardness in their general approach and rhetoric. A new turn that has become a wave.

This new wave in Danish architecture has been applauded for addressing the time we live in – with globalization, scarce resources, climate issues, the IT revolution, a new media context and, most recently, an economic crisis. But it has also been accused of ignoring certain ideas in the Danish architectural tradition. The book addresses this debate and aims to spark a broader discussion about the future of Danish architecture.

“The new wave in Danish architecture” is not aimed exclusively at architects but at anyone with an interest in architecture. It is based on articles in the magazine Arkitektur DK, Nos. 1 and 2/2012, in an expanded and re-designed form.

The book is published by The Danish Architectural Press in both English and Danish.

To order please use this link http://arkfo.dk/en/shop/product/new-wave-danish-architecture

A few pages from the book:

Monograph of Neutelings Riedijk Architects, published by 010 PUBLISHERS.

Paperback reprint, produced in reduced format, which charts Neutelings Riedijk Architects competition entries, along with realized and unrealized projects from over the last decade. The publication is arranged into themes presenting texts and illustrations on skin and patterns, hollows and patios, model studies of the sculptures and silhouettes, cartoons, photos and plans.

This book presents eight years of projects and research by MVRDV.

Three-dimensionality can be seen as architecture’s fundamental existence, the profession’s acclaimed domain. In times of globalism and scale enlargement, an update of this definition seems needed: metres turn into kilometres, “M3” becomes “KM3”.

KM3 is a story about a world that is getting dense. Very dense. It constructs its logical response: a city that is denser. A city that is continuously under construction, with space for limitless capacities, populations. Beyond scarcity. Beyond separation. Beyond pessimism and protectionism. The 3D City. A free-fall in endless space.

From right to left, from front to back, from above to below. Pure depth. KM3 is more a construct than an analysis. KM3 is a hypothesis, a theoretical city, a possible urban theory. KM3 can also be seen as a science-fiction novel, a twin pair that describes this upcoming city as an emerging presence, an already existing ‘other’ world.

The book includes a DVD of animations and two urban planning software programs by MVRDV.

Increased international attention has led to an acceleration of output for this Japanese practice and its two principle partners. The four year period covered by El Croquis has seen 24 buildings and projects initiated and in most cases completed by both SANAA and the respective offices of Sejima and Nishizawa. Presented here in full page colour photographs are both celebrated buildings such as the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, ‘De Kunstlinie’ Theatre, Almere and the Naoshima Ferry terminal, Japan, as well as lesser known and delightful private residential commissions and public and commercial offices. Introduced by a conversation between the two architects, the edition also includes plans, sketches and explanatory texts.

U četvrtak, 10. maja u 11 sati u prostoru Kafe-kluba iznad knjižare Službenog glasnika, Kneza Miloša 16, održaće se promocija knjige “Antologija Arhitekture i Civilizacije” autora arhitekte Aleksandre Mokranjac.

Ova Antologija, u izdanju Službenog Glasnika, je zbirka tekstova o graditeljskom nasledju od praistorije do savremenog doba, u kome autorka naučne i istorijske činjenice, njihov kontekst i značenje, svojim spisateljskim umećem i poetičnim jezikom interpretira, predstavlja i povezuje u celinu koja predstavlja “minimum znanja stanovnika i simpatizera srpskog govornog područja.

Aleksandra V. Mokranjac, rođena, živi i radi u Beogradu, gde je 1988. god. diplomirala na Arhitektonskom fakultetu, Odsek projektovanje, u klasi profesora Dejana Nastića. Eseje, priče i prikaze objavljuje u periodici, od 1992.godine. Član ULUPUDS-a, samostalni umetnik od 2002. godine. Antologija je njena treća knjiga. Objavila je 2 romana: Transkripcija (Geopoetika, 2006.) i Opsenarenje (Srpska književna zadruga, 2010.).

Na gomili knjiga koje sam dobio poslednjih meseci sa raznih strana, a o kojima planiram da napišem nešto, već mesecima stoji i ova – Pejzažni gradovi: poređenje razvoja urbanog identiteta Banjaluke i Graca, autora Dijane Simonović. Zapravo, ne stoji – pošto sam je više puta sa te gomile uzimao, prelistavao, iščitavao, ostavljao na radnom stolu, pokazivao posetiocima, nosio od kuće do kancelarije i obratno.

A počelo je sasvim bezazleno – knjiga je bila u paketu sa još nekoliko publikacija koje sam dobio od kolega sa fakulteta iz Banjaluke. Da je u tom paketu i jedna sasvim posebna knjiga, shvatio sam čim sam ga otvorio. Ova knjiga izdvajala se sasvim neobičnim naslovom, kao i izuzetnim nivoom grafičke opreme, retkim u današnje vreme. Naslov je na prvi pogled bio sumnjiv, kao neočekivani spoj nekih zanimljivih pojmova, a tvrdi povez i dizajn učinili su mi se preozbiljnim.

Onda sam počeo da listam. Prvo me dočekala ljubazna posveta, a odmah zatim ozbiljan i precizan sadržaj, kakav dolikuje stručnoj publikaciji. Da knjiga neće biti baš tako stroga i dosadna, nagoveštavao je tek poneki vragolasto – ženski bordo detalj u listingu poglavlja.

Poglavlja koja su usledila bila su sve samo ne dosadna. Posle ponovnog upozorenja u uvodnim napomenama, upao sam u vihor teoretskih razmatranja pojmova najavljenih još u naslovu. Pejzažni grad nasuprot vrtnom gradu i gradskom pejzažu, urbani identitet, duh mesta, kontekst, urbane forme…

Za mene, ovo je i najvredniji deo knjige. Radi se o svojevrsnom pojmovniku – sistematičnom pregledu ključnih obeležja gradskog prostora. Arhitektonske publikacije su obično razbarušene, kao i njihovi autori, te dobar deo svoje poruke ne uspevaju da prenesu usled formalne nedoteranosti. U ovoj knjizi dobili smo jasan, pregledan i udžbenički upotrebljiv materijal, koristan studentima, arhitektima i urbanistima, a sigurno i brojnim drugim čitaocima, profesionalno ili sasvim emotivno vezanim za grad.

Neko drugi verovatno će reći da je doprinos ove knjige prevashodno u tome što je, na način koji bi poželeo svaki grad, sakupljena, sistematizovana i analitički prikazana građa o razvoju grada Banjaluke. Uz obilje prvoklasnih ilustracija, od arhivskog materijala, fotografija i reprodukcija planova, do izuzetno šarmantnih autorkinih skica, ova knjiga predstavlja i udžbenik za sve koji žele da nauče nešto o Banjaluci.

Budući da je knjiga rezultat ozbiljnog naučno-istraživačkog rada, teorijske postavke i tumačenja proverena su i prikazana ne samo kroz studiju Banjaluke, već, opet kao što nam naslov nagoveštava, kroz povlačenje paralela sa razvojem Graca. Poređenjem procesa koji su formirali Banjaluku i Grac, nekih iznenađujuće sličnih, a nekih sasvim različitih, autorka je učinila značajnu stvar za svoj grad i praktično ga postavila na mapu ozbiljnih evropskih gradova.

Ostaje nam da se nadamo da će, podstaknuti primerom Dijane Simonović, i neki drugi istraživači proizvesti slične publikacije o svojim gradovima, te da će njihov rad suštinski uticati na unapređenje stanja u kome se nalaze naše kuće, ulice i gradovi.

Dijana Simonović
Pejzažni gradovi: poređenje razvoja urbanog identiteta Banjaluke i Graca
Arhitektonsko-građevinski fakultet Univerziteta u Banjoj Luci, Banjaluka, 2010.
ISBN 978-99955-667-2-2
COBISS.BH-ID 1839640
299 strana, tvrdi povez

Knjiga se može nabaviti od izdavača, kao i u knjižarama Građevinske knjige.

Tekst: Goran Petrović