Building New Belgrade for Tito's Yugoslavia (PREVIEW) (original) (raw)
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BUILDING NEW BELGRADE FOR TITO'S YUGOSLAVIA NATASA STEFANOVIC
2017
This thesis looks at the construction of New Belgrade as an urban history narrative for the history of Yugoslavia. This is a study of the history of place and space, in conjunction with the history of Tito's Yugoslavia. Beginning with the foundation for the new city, during the interwar period, the first chapter establishes an understanding of the purpose of the place during the Kingdom era. It then looks at the effect of the Second World War, and the establishment of the communist/socialist era under Josip Broz Tito. The following chapter looks at the Tito era from the split from the Cominform. It is an analysis of the creation of New Belgrade under Tito, and how it is representative of Yugoslavia’s differentiation from the Soviet Bloc. The final chapter examines New Belgrade following the Tito era, the impact of the collapse of Yugoslavia, NATO intervention and the rebuilding of New Belgrade in the 21st century.
Researching ‘the Lost Decade’ of New Belgrade
Societies and Political Orders in Transition, 2021
My research of the first stage of planning of New Belgrade was marked by a significant historic symmetry between the object (the time and place) of the study and the time when the research was carried out. The first belonged mainly to the first postwar decade, a period when Yugoslavia was being recreated as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural state articulated through the centralised economy of state socialism and the discourse of brotherhood and unity. The second-the research momentcoincided with the postwar situation-NATO attack in 1999-the decade of the final dissolution and definitive disappearance of the state created in the second half of the 1940s. The objective was to analyse the use of architecture as a part of political discourse and to relate the capacity of city building with the creation and organisation of the new state. How did architecture respond to ideological dictate, and through which architectural forms could the Yugoslav nation be best represented? How were the architectural ideas accepted among the population and how did they persist over time? The architecture of socialist Yugoslavia became internationally recognised through a photo essay on monumental legacy by Jan Kempenaers, titled Spomenik 1 (2010) that eventually inspired the 'Spomenik Database' online research project. Both of them are centred in the visually expressive abstract freestanding sculptures in landscape, built with modern materials like steel or reinforced concrete and designed by some of the most important Yugoslav architects. The last decade has produced interesting and thorough studies on the character and history of socialist architecture of Yugoslavia and New Belgrade has been an important case study in many of them.
Back to the Future of New Belgrade: Functional Past of the Modern City
When contemplating the future of cities, are we not, at the same time, critically considering its present as well as its past? And, to the extent that the focus of our vision is a modern city, how do we see the future of the city such as New Belgrade, which itself is a modern, functional city, planned and constructed in the socialist Yugoslavia in the second half of the twentieth century? Furthermore, having in view the recent change of paradigms, i.e. the break-up of the former Federation, the change of socio-political conditions and the consequent change of the concept of modernity, the fascination with the future may well benefit from closer inspection of the vacillating narrative of modernity and strategies of modernism, as they have been unfolding in the planning and construction of New Belgrade. It could be argued that the principal failure of New Belgrade is its functional incapacity, more precisely, its failure to develop as a complex spatio-urban structure of multiple functions, which has consequently put strain on the social life and movement of the community. The issue of re-functionalisation, thus, predictably becomes central in the contemporary discussion on the future of New Belgrade. Yet, could we propose that, paradoxically, the main resource of New Belgrade is that it is dysfunctional, and that its main potential for the contemporary re- functionalisation is that it is an "unfinished" modernist project? The most obvious questions which could be posed with regard to this are: How will re-functionalisation deal with the concept of the modern city?; What new/contemporary strategies of conquering the modernist open/empty space can be invented?; What impact will the new development exert on the open plan of the modern city? And, perhaps, most importantly, what new concepts are investigated and set for what is actually being designed and constructed? But, instead of generating critical concepts, New Belgrade is facing the crisis of non-concept. This being the case, would we not come to a better understanding of the contemporary situation if we were to propose that the issue of re-functionalisation calls for an invention of new and alternative strategies of modernisation, albeit those critical of the original modernist concept.
New Belgrade: from abstract to personal
2016
El articulo forma parte de la investigacion doctoral de la autora, desarrollada entre 2001 y 2006 en la Universidad Politecnica de Cataluna, en Barcelona, con el titulo “Arquitectura, ideologia y representacion. Analisis de los proyectos de Nueva Belgrado 1947-1959. Trata la cuestion del papel de los proyectos arquitectonicos en el contexto del cambio de ideologias, como un medio de comprender las complejas relaciones entre la arquitectura, el discurso dominante las estructuras de poder y las consecuencias sociales de las intervenciones urbanas a gran escala. La investigacion se centra en las diferentes fases del desarrollo de la parte central, e inicialmente mas representativa de Nueva Belgrado, la pretendida nueva capital de la recien creada Yugoslavia socialista, concluyendo con los cambios de los primeros 2000 que pusieron el acento en los valores de la nueva ciudad, asi como en las debilidades del concepto modernista en el contexto socialista, el cual fue su base original. Como...
Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 41/1, 2013
The construction of New Belgrade as the new capital of socialist Yugoslavia was the most symbolic modernizing act initiated by the country's communist government. Yet, its precise meanings were suspended between the complicated and permanently transitory concepts of socialist Yugoslavia's federalism and its international aspirations. Focusing on three characteristic “snapshots” of the city's physical development, this paper analyzes how New Belgrade and its most important buildings represented the shifting concepts of socialist Yugoslavia as a multiethnic community and its even more changeable place in the world. The first snapshot deals with the years immediately following World War II, during which New Belgrade was conceived as the seat of a centralized Stalinist state in close alliance with the USSR. The second deals with the effects of Yugoslavia's break from the Soviet bloc in 1948, especially its rapprochement with the West and the start of the decentralization of the federal state. Finally, the third explores the late socialist period: the dwindling of New Belgrade's role as the political heart of the federation, and at the same time its emergence as a locus of Yugoslavia's ambition to play a leading role in international relations, especially through its activity in the Non-Aligned Movement. Full article available at the link below for the first 50 visitors.
Belgrade has been devastated and redeveloped countless times. Various cultures, nations and conquerors left different urban matrices and physical structure. The groundwork for conceptualization and research of the urban matrix as an essential element of Belgrade’s urban morphology are graphic presentations - the old maps and plans 4 . Appreciating strategic significance Belgrade had up till 19 th century, they were mainly elaborating Belgrade Fortress area, while civil settlement – the Borough inside the Trench, a small typically oriental town (Kurtović Folić, 2000, pp. 15-21) was presented in general sketches. This paper deals with breakthrough conceptions about planned construction of Belgrade inside and outside of the fortress moat from the beginning of the 19 th till the beginning of the 20 th century. The ruling period of Prince Miloš Obrenović was especially emphasized, when planned construction of the new, geometrically regulated Belgrade settlement in Western Vračar (outside the Trench) started and was supposed to be connected with the city center of the Serbian Belgrade (inside the Trench) around the current Saborna church, via two already existing streets – Abadžijska Street and Fišeklijska Street. Prince Miloš in 1815., obtained from Marašli Ali Pasha the Savamala area with the formed village on so called slope, that was soon to be destroyed and set on fire upon his order, with the goal of building “a new Serbian Belgrade”. (Krasojević, 2004) The expelled landowners gained the opportunity to settle down on the Danube side, in the village of Palilula. In the third and the fourth decade of the 19 th century there started the planned guidance of population of respective urban areas and regulation of some tracings in Savamala and Terazije as far as the Batal Mosque, forming on the slopes of Savamala and Western Vračar a new part of Serbian Belgrade, beyond the Trench with several new “čaršija’’. (Škalamera, 1974. pp.9-14) In the period 1835-38, Prince Miloš began developing some prominent edifices and institutions of the restored Province of Serbia in this Belgrade area, and his son, Prince Mihailo Obrenović, continued with the development of this area after 1860.
MÖGG, 2020
The urban transformations taking place throughout the region of former Yugoslavia are best exemplified in the capitals of the once-communist federation’s successor states. The recent urban developments in the cities of Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo illustrate the realities of contemporary societies in the Balkans and the socio-political shifts of the pe- riod of transition. The built environments of the newly capitalist countries serve as exag- gerated, yet emblematic examples of nation-building projects and their deep entwinement with economic processes unfolding throughout post-communist South-Eastern Europe. However, the links between the post-socialist urban and national identity, as well as poli- tics and economy, remain understudied. In this paper, I enquire into the present-day urban transformations of Sarajevo, Bel- grade, and Zagreb. I examine these cities within the context of post-Yugoslav economic and political space, exploring the particularities of the creation of built environments that no longer exist on the Yugoslav periphery, but now are at the centre of newly democratic societies. Through the investigation of the political, economic, and architectural particularities of Belgrade Waterfront and Zagreb Manhattan development projects, and Sarajevovo City Center commercial complex, I examine the influx of foreign funds – mainly from the Middle East – and their impacts on the construction of regional urban centres. I argue that the modern-day capitals of post-Yugoslav states are developing as products of the interpolation of a communist past into the capitalist present characterised by the perpetual quest for “Europe”, and in line with the broader socio-political and architectural trends in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. In post-Yugoslavia, urban practices are problematically interwoven with politics: the cities simultaneously serve as displays of geopolitical change and catalysts for social transformation in post-socialist societies. Keywords: Post-socialist city, urban transformations, Balkans, nationalism, Yugoslavia, Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo
New Belgrade was the most ambitious urban project of Yugoslavia's socialist modernisation. Its fabric bears the inscriptions of three distinct globalisation projects in which the country participated as its foreign policy shifted from the most faithful ally of the USSR to the brink of joining NATO, and then to one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement. This article analyses how the key symbolic spaces of New Belgrade were shaped by these three globalisation projects and, in turn, how they participated in the shaping of socialist Yugoslavia's global imaginaries. Currently undergoing a fourth, neoliberal globalisation, the urban palimpsest of New Belgrade challenges not only the stereotypical assumptions about socialist architecture, but also the binary topology of utopian dreamworlds of the Cold War, which had its third, non-aligned side.
Belgrade: Imaging the future and creating a European metropolis
Cities, 2017
Belgrade is a European city, the capital of the Republic of Serbia and previously capital of Yugoslavia. The city lies on the confluence of two major European rivers, the Danube and the Sava. Throughout its long history, Belgrade has often been a border city between the East and West and as a result has often been attacked. This has not only influenced, but also shaped its urban structure, especially in the 19th century, when most of the structures related to its oriental Turkish character were demolished and reconstruction of the city began. Belgrade's need to develop itself as a European metropolis in accordance with European standards reveals the discrepancy between its political and cultural pretensions and the real economic opportunities. It also reveals the need of the political and intellectual elite to keep Belgrade, Serbia and Yugoslavia in a state of general development that leaves enough space for political and ideological manipulation, as well as social and national experiments, particularly in the communist and post-communist period. Based on its specific character, Belgrade is recognized as a useful case study that is not simply a "post-communist" city, but a palimpsest of every catastrophe that has been experienced in Europe over a century or more. The connection between the political and urban changes in Belgrade throughout the 20th century is more than evident. Accordingly, this paper will explore what has driven the urban change and the extent to which the balance between state, market and civil society is present in Belgrade, both during its history and today.