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.

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.

Topic: „The methodology of conservation and restoration of brick walls, lime and mud systems & management of energy consumption”

The Summer school of Architecture takes place in Bač,Vojvodina, Serbia, 25-30 August 2013

The Summer School of Architecture is an educational and scientific project of the professional NGO “The Group of Architects” from Belgrade, established in 2010. The main idea of this project is to bring together international experts and students of various disciplines to collaborate, researching the possibilities for sustainable restoration of tangible heritage. The project activities consist of lectures, practical analysis and field work.

The program of this year’s edition of the School is divided into two modules – technological and architectural. Both of the modules are going to focus on technologies of building made of brick, with brief explanation of the concept of mixed systems applied in case of housing architecture – the application of the adobe and rammed earth.

The technology module will focus on methodology of conservation and restoration of brick walls and application of lime systems (mortars). Building the program upon the experiences of the “HEROMAT” project by Faculty of Technology – University of Novi Sad and The Provincial Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments, the participants will have the opportunity to collaborate on the ongoing research on historical material sampling and diagnostics, synthesizing protective materials and mixing consolidants for the reparation of brick walls built with lime- and mud-mortar systems.

The architectural module focuses on building data bases on “monuments of culture” and pre- and post-restoration monitoring, emphasizing so called “live” heritage, the heritage/monuments that are in use. Special part of the module will be the topic of management of energy consumption in monuments of culture, and the potential application of renewable energy resources in this domain. The buildings that are going to be in the focus of this case study (fortress, certain number of houses, restaurant of traditional cuisine) are going to be of various use/function, scattered around the municipality.

Who can apply: Summer school is open for students of architecture, technology, civil engineering, conservation and art history

fee: 299Eur (the fee covers accommodation, food and working material)

Važni datumi:

Application deadline: 10 August 2013

Summer school: 25-30 August 2013.

More information and the application form can be found at Group of architects’ website www.grupaarhitekata.org in sections News and Current projects

Topic: “Facilities of technical culture: recycling, restoration and reuse for the purpose of the heritage management in Bač municipality”

Time line: 23^rd – 26^th August

The Summer School of Architecture is a scientific and educational project of “The Group of Architects” that was established in 2010. The main idea of this project is to bring together experts and students of architecture from the Southern and Central Europe region to work on a common task – the research of various aspects of the potential development of buildings and areas listed and protected as a national heritage. The focus of research is on the aspects of sustainable development of the architectural and urban heritage. This research is conducted through practical analysis and field work.

The Summer School of Architecture brings together students in order to work on the projects related to the protection of cultural heritage. Students are given the opportunity to work with experts, operate in multidisciplinary teams and get in touch with the actual users – residents.

During the Summer School of Architecture, experts in various fields will guide the participants trough the possibilities of application of traditional building techniques which can help addressing the issue of energy efficiency building. In addition, the participants will have an opportunity to get familiar with practical techniques of recording, measuring, mapping, modeling and testing through practical work.

Target group: Students of architecture (Southern and Central Europe region), and young researchers

Official language: English

Participation fee: 50 eur

Important dates:

Registration and application: 1^st – 20^th June 2012

Results and confirmation: 1^st July 2012

Summer School: 23rd – 26th August 2012

First public presentation of the results: 30^th September 2012

Publication of the results: 15^th January 2013

For more information and application form please visit: www.grupaarhitekata.org