Vladimir Kulic, Modernism

Masha Tatalovič

The Yugoslav Dream

The architecture and economy of the neighbourhood unit in socialist Ljubljana

1. Vladimir Kulic, Modernism in-between: The Mediatory Architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia. (Berlin: Jovis Verlag GmbH, 2012).

2. Srna Mandič, Stanovanje in država, (Ljubljana: ZPS, 1996), 137-139.

3. Martina Malešič, “Pomen skandinavskih vplivov za slovensko stanovanjsko kulturo” (PhD diss., Univerza v Ljubljani, Filozofska fakulteta, 2013), 4248.

4. Yugoslav dream: hybrid way of living, between individual and collective

5. Social inequality was empirically lower in Slovenia than in other parts of Yugoslavia - and also faded by the 1980s.

Yugoslavia was a socialist state, the middle point between total collectivisation and individualism. More collectivised than the West and more individualistic than the socialist East. Like other European countries, the prevailing building type of postwar urbanisation was collective social housing. It took up much of the architectural practice; however, numerous individual family homes were also built with private funds, often aided by loans from banks and enterprises.1 Social rented housing (slo. družbeno najemno stanovanje) was the key instrument of the socialist housing policy. It was primarily institutionalised as a component of total consumption in labour organisations, which formed housing funds that, independent from state authorities, decided on allocating funds. The state’s direct role in rental housing care was minor compared to municipalities and labour organisations.2

At the top of the list of priorities of the newly established second Yugoslavia (1945) was improving housing conditions. The fundamental reason for this was politically-ideological. Housing being accessible to everyone was one of the essential tasks of the social program.3 Paradoxically, attaining the “Yugoslav dream”4 was not accessible to everyone. Due to the constant lack of affordable social apartments, priority in the allocation process was given to more affluent classes. The more numerous blue-collar workers often had to expend their modest incomes on building their own houses.5 Therefore, in contrast to social housing in the West, which was primarily aimed at marginalised groups and subject to stigmatisation, in Yugoslavian socialism, it was considered an indicator of privilege.

For all these reasons, it is precisely in the sphere of everyday life that Yugoslavia was most explicitly socialist and most peculiarly Yugoslav. That was the context in which the largest body of architecture was built. Although

Opposite page: Figure 1: Scene from a Slovene movie “Sreča na vrvici”, 1977, Filmed at Soseska “Ruski car” BS7