Meanings of the city: Zagreb's new housing communities since the 1950s (original) (raw)
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Facta Universitatis, Series: Architecture and Civil Engineering, 2023
This paper investigates the residential towers of Block 10 in Vojvode Stepe Boulevard, Belgrade, Serbia. The two towers (buildings no. 39 and 40) were initially designed by Branko Aleksić in 1969 and redesigned three years later by Aleksić and his co-author, Stana Aleksić. Taking into account the housing policy of the day, the urban planning of the Boulevard and the role played by the towers' investor, association 'INPROS', the paper approaches architects as intermediaries. The designers are understood as part of a network addressing Belgrade's housing deficit, themselves navigating a tight creative space determined by forces operating beyond their control. At the same time, their work is recognized as bent on producing a distinct set of subjectivities, with each referring, individually, to a pattern of political organisation, consumer culture, gender, or class. The towers are thus probed for their capacity to act as a medium, both in themselves and as part of a larger whole.
Spaces of transition: testing high standard housing in late-socialist Belgrade
Planning Perspectives Volume 35, Number 6, 2020, 2020
The article explores housing models and hybrid typologies advanced as part of an urban renewal programme in Belgrade (Serbia, former Yugoslavia) in the 1980s. We argue that these typologies were tested against the socialistmodernist model of mass residential construction that had been dominant since the 1960s. Our research identifies the design methodologies employed in the insertion of collective housing typologies into an elite residential quarter of traditionally-planned detached family houses, in the case of high standard housing project Dedinje II/2 (1979–1986) designed by the architect Zoran Županjevac. The article particularly focuses on local adaptation of the transnational concept of designing spaces of transition between community and privacy. Instrumental in this adaptation, we aim to show, was the educational experience and professional practice critical of radical modernism gained by the architect in the USA, UK and Austria. In particular, we find that the project reflects the transfer of knowledge and experience across cultural, geographic and political contexts. The resulting typologies, we contend, not only represented an example of a pluralist approach to late-socialist architecture but provided models for re-thinking housing in the transition to the market economy of the post-socialist period.
Urban Processes in Zagreb. Residential and Commercial Developments
Hrvatski geografski glasnik/Croatian Geographical Bulletin
In the post-socialist and transition period, Croatia and especially its capital city Zagreb have experienced many physical transformations of space but, most of all, remarkable social changes. For example, socially-oriented housing construction planned and co-fi nanced by towns in Croatia is in a very unfavourable position compared to private housing construction, especially on the outskirts of towns. This benefi ts neither towns nor their residents, but rather only those urban actors interested in the development of capitalism. In recent years, there has been a lot of building in the city core and on the outskirts of Zagreb, which is not well integrated into the existing urban structure, image or skyline of the city. There is also a major problem of insuffi cient primary and secondary infrastructure in the new housing estates. The current situation in the planning process is characterized by confl ict and lack of balance between powerful political and economic actors and less powerful professional and civil actors. Experts of various profi les often point out that ignoring the process of planning means irreparable long-term damage to the space. Such incongruous transformations show the absence of comprehensive urban planning and urbanism.
INDICATORS OF THE HOUSING STOCK IN ZAGREB FROM 1945 UNTIL THE LATE 1960 s
Review of Croatian history, 2020
This paper uses Zagreb as a case study for assessing the development of a socialist city and the housing issues that this development implied. After World War II, Zagreb experienced steep demographic growth owing to a large influx of rural population, and to a lesser extent as a result of natality increase. In 1946, the city had about 270 thousand inhabitants, and in 1969 about 570 thousand. Due to the accelerated industrial development, it needed new workforce , but lacked housing, and its infrastructure was not sufficiently developed to meet the needs of all its residents. Housing construction was based on both social and private initiatives, whereby socially funded projects were multi-storey buildings and the privately funded ones single-storey houses. Due to these private constructions, that is, houses with one storey only, Zagreb resembled a village rather than a city. In assessing the housing construction of Zagreb and its urban development in general after World War II, we are inclined to agree with Davor Stipetić's statement that Zagreb arose as an architectural enterprise that lacked planning in its development.
sITA - studies in History and Theory of Architecture, 2021
Postwar ideological shift and change of political paradigm in Croatia, an integral part of Yugoslavia at the time, implied a sharp break with many prewar practices. In this regard, the question of housing was no exception. Moreover, given the extent of the postwar housing crisis, the notion of housing became a crucial political and social issue, and its ideological potential was immediately recognized. Therefore, despite the massive housing shortage, the primal question was not technical – how to make as many apartments as possible in the shortest possible time, but ideological – what kind of apartments should be built? What is genuine housing for a new Yugoslav socialist man? This research follows the postwar quest for an ideal socialist apartment in Croatia. By retracing the expert debates and discussing examples related to different theoretical positions, the article unveils the ideological discourse on housing, which evolved from an initial setup debate between advocates of individual houses and those in favor of high-density collective housing typologies to proposals for the apartment layout that sought to change the way of living and accommodate socialist everyday life. While considering what the description of a socialist dwelling might be in the context of Croatia, the paper draws attention to the discrepancy between what was envisaged and what was realized. The former represents the official, collective housing, promoted and thoughtfully considered in accordance with the socialist modernization agenda, while the latter includes informal, self-built housing that was developed along the margins of the urban space, without noteworthy attention of either architects or the socialist authorities.
European Middle-Class Mass Housing: Past and Present of the Modern Community, 2023
In many aspects MCMH development in Serbia/Yugoslavia was unprecedented, determined by a growing and unacknowledged formation of a middle class in the context of Yugoslav socialism, and a widely proclaimed but elusive social ideal of “housing for all”. Two types of MCMH were the most prevalent in the period considered here (1945-1991): a multi-storey collective residential building, in or outside the city centre, and the individual private house, built in formal and informal or so-cold “wild” settlements. The Yugoslav housing experiment emerged mostly within the collective residential estates. The appropriation, innovation and even invention of different industrial building methods was further enhanced by excellent standards in urban planning and architectural design, exemplified in this study by selected MCMH cases in New Belgrade, Novi Sad, Bor and Subotica. Due to aging, lack of maintenance and the impoverishment of its inhabitants, the present state of this large housing stock is poor, its future uncertain, and yet, its lessons are of vital importance today.
Život umjetnosti 73/2, 2004
The paper presents ethnographic research with primary school children (age 9-15) in one neighbourhood in Novi (New) Zagreb, part of the city of Zagreb built in the second half of the 20th century. The author analyses processes of place-making through growing up in a modernist urban landscape, emotional relations children construct to high rise buidings, their evaluation of space for play and interaction with other people in the neighborhood as well as their reactions to the stereotypes of living in a "dormitory", as New Zagreb is used to be called. The research shows that there is a difference in perceptions of one's own neighborhood with regards to the age of children, but they all have strong feelings of attachment and home. The article is published in Croatian and in English.
2023
In study case of Sarajevo and by contextualizing the topic in modern time, we seek to get an answer to the hypothesis: whether the previous researches of Yugoslav scientific institutions and the work of architects starting from human scale and needs, followed by the development of technologically advanced prefabricated constructive systems, and resulting in exceptional housing concepts, are sufficiently universal and applicable as a basis for further upgrading and tailoring to new times? The research aims to present the already achieved quality and scope which could serve as a sound basis for comprehensive upgrade and adjustment to current and future circumstances. The affirmation of positive examples and accomplishments in the architecture of Yugoslav modernism is an incentive to continue activities in architecture that will promote it as a deeply humane and progressive future-oriented profession, rather than a blind executor and designer of ideas and wishes of often controversial investors.
The Problem of the House in 1960s Belgrade: Mediating the Individual and the Collective
Architektura&Urbanizmus, 2017
Architecture and ambience of the low-rise high-density single-family housing estate Petlovo Brdo in Belgrade, Serbia (1967-69), relate everyday social production of space in socialism as a contemporary vernacular outcome of the notions of the folkloric and the peripheral. Socio-spatial balance between the individual and the communal, pursued by the estate’s architects Elsa and Branislav Milenković, is achieved by variation of seven apartment types in four house types and their diverse grouping in immediate neighbourhoods with pedestrian circulation. Architectural design upholds modular coordination, apartments’ use-value as a function of layout disposition, environmental mindfulness and aesthetic of domesticity and small scale urbanity.