“Milutin Borisavljević and His Scientific Aesthetics of Architecture,” in Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies 22:2 (2008; published in 2011): pp. 133-147 (original) (raw)
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EDA. ESEMPI DI ARCHITETTURA, 2023
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Dinko Kovačić is a prominent Croatian architect and university professor. His design approach is characterised by exceptional empathy that results in architectural works of intense connection with the environment as well as with that of their future users. Although many of Kovačić’s works have been published in the daily press and professional publications, the complete oeuvre of this architect has so far not been the subject of scientific research. The aim of this scientific work is to look at his specific design approach based on the analysis of representative examples. Research methods in this paper include the analysis of primary and secondary sources and on-site observation. The article gives a systematic presentation of Dinko Kovačić’s work as related to his specific approach, which integrates the modernism of the second half of the 20th century and the Mediterranean tradition.
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Attempting to highlight the specificity of the architect Milan Lojanica?s design approach, clearly distinct in his first professional decennary 1962-1972, the focus of this paper is on his firstly designed and developed, and afterwards awarded architectural masterpiece, which he realized with his associates, architects Cagic and Jovanovic - i.e. the urban suprastructure of Julino brdo/Jula?s hill (1967-1970). As fifty years has passed from its first drawings, and the project documentation consists of exceptionally rare fragments only, one of the main goals of the research was the attempt to reconstruct the complete creative process - including its particular modality of construction/materialization. Although in its results merely a brief recapitulation of Lojanica?s innovative beginnings, the discourse still may provide a source-material for the genre of textbooks - from student to technical practice - regarding the rarest and almost forgotten discipline of experimental urban (mass)...
This paper aims to highlight the acceptance of the Russian Empire style in the first half of the 20th century in Belgrade. The occurrence of the Empire style in Belgrade is unusual in relation to the time and spatial distance and the fact that the style was not present in Serbian cultural environment in the period of its flourishing during 19th century. The elements of the Empire style in public and private buildings are the evocation of the cultural memory of the Russian Empire, which was abolished at the time of the formation of capital of the Kingdom of SHS.This paper aims to highlight the acceptance of the Russian Empire style in the first half of the 20th century in Belgrade. The occurrence of the Empire style in Belgrade is unusual in relation to the time and spatial distance and the fact that the style was not present in Serbian cultural environment in the period of its flourishing during 19th century. The elements of the Empire style in public and private buildings are the evocation of the cultural memory of the Russian Empire, which was abolished at the time of the formation of capital of the Kingdom of SHS. This paper presents the research of the activities of Russian architects in Belgrade as a reflection of architectural, cultural, and political ties of St. Petersburg and the capital of the newly formed Kingdom of SHS/ Yugoslavia. The work traces the development of the architecture of Belgrade through the work of prominent emigrant builders, who arrived mainly from St. Petersburg, and who despite adaptation to already established stylistic currents in Belgrade, strongly emphasized their national diversity, evoking the imperial style of Alexander I that marked 19th-century buildings of Russian capital. The buildings erected in the Russian Empire style are rare for the Serbian environment. The significance of this architectural heritage is that it reflects an era and clearly stated Russian national identity, analogous to the representative buildings erected in St. Petersburg and Moscow in the 19th century. The evocation of the Russian Empire in Belgrade in the period 1920-1933 is also the last emanation of this style, which makes this phenomenon very important both for Russian and Serbian culture and also significant in the wider context of the world’s architectural heritage.
Defining a style: Applied art and architectural design in the Serbian architecture
Proceedings of the international conference SmartArt2019, 2020
The aim of this paper is to present a complex relationship between applied arts and architectural design, made through the development of styles in the Serbian architecture of the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. It is based on previous conclusions and new perspectives arising from research of archival material and legacies of builders and applied artists, as well as present observations and conclusions. Observing the parallel development of architecture with the economic , political, social and cultural phenomena of the period, one can notice qualitative and quantitative rise of the applied arts, which in their various forms are a reflection of the time. The bond between applied arts and architecture had shown a significant role in shaping the styles of the Serbian architecture prevalently in Belgrade, largest Serbian city and the capital of The Principality of Serbia (1830–1882) and The Kingdom of Serbia (1882–1918) and The Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1945), as well as The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1963), through developing stylistic flows of Academicism, Secession, Art Deco, Modern and Socialistic realism, as well as many transient stylistic phenomena depending on local and foreign influences. Although it was not widely open to constructive experiments, the architecture of Serbia embraced the spirit of contemporary aestheticism adapting it to the local taste, expressing it with various sophisticatedly designed stylistic elements of applied arts. Stained glass, mosaic, wall painting, sculpture and relief, modern locksmith work, furniture and interior design, as well as the concept of facade composition in relation to the personal creative sensibilities of the author, taste and wishes of the clients, were given particular motifs and characteristics that determined the identity of the building in terms of style. Despite the importance of applied art and its significance for the development of the Serbian architecture of the noted period, insufficient knowledge of its opulent corpus, its authors and tendencies, conditioned by poorly preserved and rarely presented documentary material, puts to historiography the conclusion of the need for more thorough research and of publication of the knowledge about applied art in Serbia. Pointing to this specific collaborative practice of applied arts with architectural design is an attempt to contribute to this aim.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE IMAGINARY IN THE ESTETICS OF THE SERBIAN ARCHITECTURE OF THE SEDOND HALF OF 20TH CENTURY AND ITS SOCIAL RELATIONISM , 2019
Abstract | Imaginary is not a lie - regardless of whether the imaginary is a category used by the society to confront the real or rather to spread beyond its limits, what remains is the question of its presence not only in the esthetical, psychological and anthropological, but also in the social and historical situation, especially in case of a feature which is a significant catalyst of creativity and esthetical formation. The discovery of the imaginary in the esthetic codes of the development stages of the overall Serbian and Belgrade architecture in the Yugoslav ideological milieu, opens the possibility of classificatory schemes, which yield the potential for the critical history of formation of the visual culture of the capital city and Yugoslav state heritological valorization. Discovery of the imaginary represents the theoretical mechanism which, in the hermeneutical circle, connects the esthetic theory, heritological matrix of architectural creativity and social relationisms. Comparative observation of the esthetic tendencies of Serbian and Belgrade architecture of the late 20th century in large chronological chunks, leads to the conclusion that there are three key chronological phases of the visual transformation of the architectural esthetic medium: [1] the phase of the modernity tradition, alongside the ideological pressures of the short-term neo-Marxist antibourgeois revolution till the early 1950s, during which it goes beyond the Eastern-European socialist-realistic esthetic paradigm; [2] the phase of the highly modern architecture, alongside the changing tendencies of ideological revisions of the socialistic autonomous idea of the liberal society and industrialization, during which the western architectural esthetics was surpassed through the establishment in the domain of critical regionalism and features of the advanced classical construction system, and finally [3] the postmodern phase, alongside the populist social revolution and the final phase of the populist vulgarization of the state during the final stage of the Yugoslav cryptofederal union, during which the renewal of the tradicionalistic discursive formations takes place, as a dominant centrifugal forces in the framework of the official ideology. In a political platform of the populist vulgarization of the state which foreshadowed the social hypocrisy of the then already Serbian, so called, transitional period, the postmodern esthetics was, on a global wave of pop-culture and, by means of social populism, transformed into a vulgar architectural kitsch, permeating profoundly into the 1990s. Key words| imaginary, architectural chronologies, aesthetic paradigm, social relationalism, simbolic formation
In light of the development of contemporary Serbian architecture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the work of the team of architects Milenija and Darko Marušić is indicative of trends in Serbia’s Belgrade architectural scene. Their substantial and affirmed architectural activities encompass a series of issues and themes related both to the changes in Serbian architecture permeated with dialogues between modernism and postmodernism in the last decades of the twentieth century and to the specificity of the author’s contribution based on the personal foothold around which their architectural poetics weaves. The context of postmodernism, particularly the Neo-Rationalist European current, has been a suitable ambience in the genesis and upgrade of their creativity. It can be considered through several typical themes on the Modernism versus Postmodernism - relation, starting from the issue of contextuality as determination, through duality, mutual dialogue as an impetus, attitude about the comprehensiveness of architectural considerations based on the unbreakable link between the urbanism and architecture, and on the issues of urban morphology the theme oriented towards both the professional community and the wider public, but also towards architecture itself – its ethics and aesthetics, which are equally important themes for them. Key words: modernism versus postmodernism, duality, Serbia, Belgrade school of housing, contextuality.
ARCHITECTURAL WORK OF ALEKSANDAR DEROKO -BEAUTY OF EMOTIONAL CREATIVITY
2019
This paper studies significant and forgotten, but not less important, built and unrealised designs by Serbian architect Aleksandar Deroko. It seeks to achieve a continuous view in dealing with Deroko`s architectural work versus the historical discontinuity of political, territorial-geographic and social circumstances. It is impossible to separate Deroko as an architect from Deroko as a scholar, researcher, historian of architecture and art, an academic professor, painter, artist, writer, chronicler of his time, protector, conservator and historiographer of Serbian cultural heritage. The main aim of this paper is to apply comprehensive research approach within which his work in the field of architectural design will be considered in a complementary and pluralistic way. Deroko’s architectural projects examined in their details and altogether represent distillate of Deroko’s erudite personality, which casts shadow on relevant questions of Serbian history of architecture placement: How to understand it, observe and examine it, from Yugoslav or Serbian perspective, from the position of continuity or discontinuity, through characteristics of general or particular?