Belgrade scapes lab big projects

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BiG PR OJE CTS BELGRADE.SCAPES:LAB April, 2014.

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SCAPES:LAB ID _? The core idea of the SCAPES:LAB initiative is to both define&produce an independent platform for knowledge transfer that addresses the pressing, way-finding urge of reshuffling architecture&urbanism education modes. SCAPES:LAB explores alternatives to hierarchical models and produces knowledge through innovative – critical and progressive – readings of cities & policies, direct collaboration with professionals, colleagues and institutions, variety of collectives (large and small), activists and other relevant initiatives - aimed at establishing a transnational, networked structure that focuses on actualities without hesitation. Research activities are concerned with the impact of politics, economy and society on architectural/urban reality and vice versa. WHO_? SCAPES:LAB is co-initiated by IDnet & Center of Architecture from Novi Sad, Serbia with the support and participation of students & young professionals with background in architecture and urban planning, coming from Novi Sad, Niš and Belgrade / Serbia, Podgorica / Montenegro, Skopje / Macedonia and Sarajevo, Banja Luka / Bosnia and Herzegovina*. Activities are organized with(in) the autonomously built network of collaborators across Europe.

* Countries with similar background; from the Balkans region (ex Yugoslavia); non-EU countries (pol) in Europe (geo). EU Integration (at the moment in the final stages) process coincides with the transition of their economic, political and educational paradigms.

WHY_? Deconstructed societies – trapped in between the challenges of transitional tendencies toward EU integration and the intra-construction of representative democracy modes – are marked by dramatic changes which substantially involve educational output. Institutions aimed at public schooling are transformed formally, not factually. Relevant phenomenology is being interpreted out of its true context – uncritically – and the content remains highly mystified. Confusion arises. HOW_? We believe that the continuity of discontinuity and the permanent state of (re)construction in the Balkans (and Europe) can bring about a production of relevant forms and formats for research. Methodologically, SCAPES:LAB advocates open, collective educational structures – DIY_Education modes – where self-organized research groups facilitate the production, exchange and distribution of all findings. By encouraging a critical mindset among its participants, SCAPES:LAB expands the field of studies on the behalf of post-socialist cities in Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia & Herzegovina. Actions are conducted through temporary autonomous labs aspiring to define, create and engage permanent structures. PAST_? SCAPES:LAB is established to synchronize capacities built through five years of intense production in SCAPES separate programs/territories; FRearCH / 2013 in France and Confederatio Helvetica / Switzerland, EScapes / 2012 in Spain, FLATscapes 01, 02 and 03 / 2009-2011 in The Netherlands. + From 2009-2014, more than 900 young professionals had chance to collaborate and produce through different programs.

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Participants* *MVP

Ana Ivanišević Sara Miladinovic Ivona Miteva Vladimir Arsovski Danica Jovanovic Ekin Güven Bojana Segic Tatjana Ivanovic Marta Nikolić Ervina Muftić Jovana Stojkovic Katerina Toleska Jelena Tasić Luna Lukić Martina Milic Ana Popovic Lina Dimitrovska Iris Puzović Jelena Dzinovic Srna Tulić Ivana Marjanovic Sanja Đurđević Dušan Božić Luka Pavelka Ksenija Radovanovic Jovana Umičević Ana Hristova Mirjana Živanov Sanja Dubljević Aleksandra Rakovic Marina Marinkov Dimitra Jovanovska Dragana Pantelić Alen Horić Senad Alibegovic Džana Ajanović Danica Masal Senja Radonjic Marija Petrovska Sofija Tanasković Sara Devic Nebojša Vilotić Marijana Nikolovska Djordje Jovic Dijana Kljajić Marija Milosavljević Mima Pešić Miloje Krunić Nenad Stijovic Saška Cvijanović Iva Teodora Vukovic Mirjana Lozanovska Adrijana Andreevska Isidora Vanja Gnječ Nikola Gjorgjievski Jordanka Sazdovska Marko Conevski Iva Shokoska Pavel Veljanoski Sandra Mojsova Elena Janeva Lazo Lazarov Milana Milankovic Nastasja Budjevac Ana Paunović Martina Atanasovska Milos Jokic Aleksandra Andonovska Malik Alibegovic Jovana Laketić Tamara Radic Ivana Gramatikova Danica Raznatovic Jovana Petkovic Maja Kopta Jelena Stankovic Jovana Kazic Vladimir Jovanovic Dina Haljeta Cvijan Pajkanović Jovana Jekić Tamara Miletic Milica Milojevic Predrag Milovanovic Aleksandra Gavric Aleksandar Pavlović Andjelka Markovic Ivan Krnjajić Taras Subotic Anja Milojević

Contributing editors:

Worskhop moderation: W1 - Vesna Jovanović, Iva Čukić / W2 - Milica Leković, Marko Macura, Haris Piplas, Snežana Timotijević, Nina Radosavljević + Srna Tulić / W3 - Ana Nikezić, Nataša Pavlović, Dragan Marković / W4 - Marija Maruna + Goran Milićević, Dubravka Sekulić / W5 - Nicolas Ziesel + Daša Spasojević, Predrag Milić / W6 - Dragan Marinčić, Goran Govedarica / W7 Vladimir Radinović, Paul Currion Lectures: Alessandra Cianchetta, Marija Maruna, Vesna Jovanović, Ana Nikezić, Nicolas Ziesel, Haris Piplas Panel Discussion: Radivoje Dinulović + Miljana Zeković, Mia David, Danica Prodanović, Daniel Schwartz, Milica Leković, Marko Macura Torre David screening: Daniel Schwartz

Editorial Board

Editor in chief *Event coordinators Publishers Number of Copies Place and Year Support

Marko Macura Milica Leković Miloš Drašković Marko Macura Miloš Drašković, Nebojša Kosmajac & Marko Macura SCAPES:LAB initiative / Center of Architecture & Incentive Dialogue Network X (.pdf - free to share) Belgrade / 2014. None - BGSL is not supported by any Fund or Granting programme

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Contents

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Background ...................................................................................................................................................... 8 Workshop Kick-Offs .......................................................................................................................................18 Proceedings / Abstracts ................................................................................................................................. 33 Minutes ........................................................................................................................................................... 41 Workshop Outcomes ..................................................................................................................................... 83 Participants Questionnaire ........................................................................................................................... 137 People ............................................................................................................................................................ 153

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I

Background

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Mogli bismo reći da se gradski pejzaž današnjeg užeg Beograda ne može posmatrati bez pravilnog čitanja uslova koje diktira tržište (nekakvo i nečije). Uz kakofoniju političkih obaveštenja i neuke interpretacije liberalne ekonomske logike nameće se investitorski urbanizam kao jedini mogući format u planiranju i razvoju grada.

We might say that Belgrade cityscape nowadays cannot be introduced without rightful reading of conditions dictated by (someones) market demands. Free interpretation of neoliberal economic logic has prevailed in most of decision making processes - generating a specific form of market driven urbanism. It is commonly reinforced with the cacophony of promising political statements, claimed to be the only possible solution in city planning and its development.

Institucije; zadužene, i od društva plaćene i delegirane za planiranje i preispitivanje, kritiku i afirmaciju stručne vrednosne savesti, (p)održane su slabim mehanizmima za učešće javnosti. Tendencije su neupitne, neproverljive, isključene iz procesa preispitivanja dok su rešenja apsolutna, velika, sudbinska, jedino moguća, ozbiljna, skupa, svetla, zapošljavajuća, bogata. Kao takva, ona se ponosno predstavljaju ”duševnoegzistencijalno” istrošenom društvu - zaključanom u tranziciono stanje društva iščekivanja. Dok nečiji interes diktira veličinu, zahvati su sve veći, i kao takvi – veliki, lepi, spektakularizovani i izrenderovani - lakše se nameću i čine da se svi bolje osećamo.

Institutions – aimed at questioning, criticizing and building of a professional conscience within the society – are (decided to be) marginalized, process embraced with poor mechanisms for public participation. Tendencies are neither questioned nor revised while solutions are being absolute, big, only possible, serious, prosperous, rich, promising and urgent-due-to-possible-employment-opportunitiesit-provides. New realities through big projects are being promoted to the generally disappointed public - society trapped in a never ending transitional state of expectancy (society of the expectance). Promulgated as beautiful, grand, spectacular - wonderfully rendered - they are easily imposed, making us all feel just great.

Posebno mesto zauzima predstava borbe za velike projekte kao borbe za bolji život: svih nas. Tu se krije specifična vrsta kolektivizacije svake odgovornosti, dok se svaki interes privatizuje.

Specific position makes the representation of big projects as part of a struggle for better life and of us all. We can easily witness the process of collectivization of any responsibility, while all interests are being privatized.

A grad je ipak zajednički i složen poduhvat, tako mora.

But, the city is a complex, conscientious interaction of many actors.

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U nedostatku relevantne kritike i uz institucije izgubljene izvorne i svrsishodne pozicije, BELGRADE.SCAPES:LAB je formiran kao kolaborativna platforma za istraživanje, namenjena adresiranju i kritičkom sagledavanju aktuelnih, nejasno predstavljenih projekata za transformaciju velikih područja u Beogradu.

At the moment, relevant critic is in short supply and institutions aimed at forming it are caught in serious limitations. BELGRADE.SCAPES:LAB is formed as a collaborative research platform aimed to critically address actualities in vaguely defined models for the transformation of big territories – BiG Projects in the city of Belgrade.

Programom se promišlja i afirmiše niz pitanja koja ostaju bez odgovora.

BGSL offers emancipation of the questions that are left without any answer in the current circumstances.

Kako veliki projekti utiču na grad i ko (treba da) ih predstavlja? Kakve su posledice i ko o njima (treba da) brine? Šta su moguće alternative? Šta je zaista veliki projekat? Kako pomiriti planove sa realnošču tranzicionog društva svedenog na iščekivanje (društvo očekivanja) i zagledanog u političko-ekonomske konstrukte?

How do big projects affect the city and who (should) they correspond to? What are the consequences, and who (should) care? What are possible alternatives? What is a really big project? How to reconcile the plans with the reality of the transitional society (society of expectance) sentenced at staring into the promising political-economic constructs?

Kako (umesto velikih projekata) razvijati svest o velikim potrebama?

(Instead of dealing with big projects), how to develop the awareness of the great (big) needs?

Čitanjem i kontekstualizacijom urgentnih pitanja kroz komparativnu analizu, gostujuća predavanja, polemičke uvide i radionički rad stvara se novi prostor za emancipaciju, kako velikih tema tako i - najvažnije - studenata i mladih profesionalaca iz oblasti arhitekture, urbanizma i srodnih disciplina.

Way-finding contextualization of a series of urgently (im)posed questions are read and understood through comparative analysis, guest lectures and polemical findings within the workshop outcomes. The results are generating new positioning and emancipation of – equally important – big topics and students/young professionals.

Direktnom i angažovanom saradnjom sa relevantnim institucijama i ekspertima, SCAPES:LAB ističe značaj internacionalizacije i trans-nacionalnog doprinosa radi objektivizacije zaključaka te, još važnije, oslobođenja od lokalnih, najčešće usko-interesnih sagledavanja (opterećenih načinima za finansiranje).

Through an engaged collaboration with relevant institutions and experts, SCAPES:LAB underlines the importance of strong internationalization and transnational contribution aimed at objective findings and discussion and - more importantly - detachment from the local, commonly interestdriven notions.

Ponuđeni model privremeno formirane laboratorije omogućio je autonomni prostor za trajno kritičko pozicioniranje, te novog mesta za građenje profesionalne svesti.

Presented model of a temporary framed lab shapes the space of autonomy for permanent critical thinking and positioning of a new breeding path within the professional public.

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BELGRADE.SCAPES:LAB / BiG PROJECTS (BGSL) nije podržan od strane ijednog fonda i deo je SCAPES:LAB inicijative koja kroz svoj rad umrežava i angažuje akademske radnike, autore, nezavisne istraživače, studente i mlade profesionalce iz arhitekture i urbanizma, dok se sadržaj tematski formira sa tendencijom stalnog rasta, pravilne razmene i zajedničkom saradnjom.

BELGRADE.SCAPES:LAB (BGSL) is not supported by any fund, and is a part of a SCAPES:LAB initiative; that networks and engages academics, authors, independent researchers, students and young professionals from the fields of architecture / urbanism and related disciplines. The content is thematically framed with the tendency of continuous growth, appropriate exchange and collaborative engagement.

Učesnici su velikim odzivom u kratkom roku, za manje od dve nedelje za apliciranje, potvrdili veliku potrebu ali i dalji potencijal za rast.

Participants have shown great response in a very short application period of less than two weeks.

BELGRADE.SCAPES:LAB / BiG PROJECTS je svojim programom razložio tematski pretpostavljene beogradske velike projekte kroz:

Program generated several thematic schemes on Belgrade BiG projects aimed at appropriate flow:

A/ Radionice B/ Konferenciju C/ Panel diskusije D/ Projekciju, analizu i diskusiju o dokumentarnom filmu - Torre David

A/ Workshops B/ Conference C/ Panel discussion D/ Screening, analysis and discussion on documentary Torre David

U rad su uključeni studenti arhitekture i srodnih disciplina, te mladi profesionalci iz Beograda, Novog Sada, Skoplja, Banja Luke, Sarajeva i Niša.

Participants are students in the fields of architecture and urbanism from the Balkans region; Belgrade, Novi Sad, Skopje, Banja Luka, Sarajevo and Niš.

U toku nešto manje od 4 dana, preko 90 učesnika su, u saradnji sa ekspertima/tutorima iz Bazela, Ciriha, Beograda, Njujorka, Novog Sada i Pariza definisali, analizirali, angažovali i interpretirali postavljene teme.

In less than 4 days, over 90 participants, in close collaboration with tutors and moderators from Basel, Zurich, Belgrade, New York, Novi Sad and Paris, have defined, analyzed, engaged and interpreted the prearranged themes producing new findings.

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Agenda

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II

Workshop Kick-Offs

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W.1

(Un)conscious Belgrade A City-archive of Big Ideas

W.2

Neglected bigness

W.3

Belgrade HighLine

W.4

Agreement Arena: Creation of Social consensus

W.5

Le festin de Belgrade

W.6

Scales(- in between)

W.7

Lost in vibration

W.8

BEGRADE NIGHT.SCAPES

Vesna Jovanović Iva Čukić Milica Leković Marko Macura Haris Piplas Snežana Timotijević Nina Radosavljević + Srna Tulić Ana Nikezić Dragan Marković Nataša Janković Marija Maruna

Nicolas Ziesel Daša Spasojević Dragan Marinčić Goran Govedarica Marta Zafirovska Vladimir Radinović Paul Currion SCAPES:LAB Students

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W.1

(Un)conscious Belgrade A City-archive of Big Ideas

Vesna Jovanović Iva Čukić

This workshop's goal is to consider Belgrade as a productive "cityarchive:" as a city that could in its complex form be read as the outcome of many initiated - if not entirely implemented - Big (Metropolitan) ideas. The city is a repository of fragments that have succeeded in becoming "monuments." A monument cannot be built, it arises over time, i.e. it is society that imbues it with meaning and it is from this vantage point that we speak about collective memory. How, then, can architects deal with the collective memory of the city? The locations that we will investigate might not appear to stand in a clear physical dialectic to one another, they nevertheless can and will be viewed as one system of "faites urbaines," where by this we mean those forms that carry a productive relationship towards heritage. An important presupposition is that Belgrade as an "urban bricolage" holds within itself already the seeds for its further development - and we will attempt to discover those seeds. On select locations we will conduct an analysis and discussion around the ideas that were behind the built projects and what quality they still retain today. In the next step we will consider these seemingly "finished" fragments of the city as incomplete, and ask the question what new forms and content could emerge in and around them (what is the location "missing," what is Belgrade missing?). If the city has a collective memory, then it is the objective of this workshop to build upon this memory: we will test whether it is necessary to sharpen preexisting ideas or to attach, adjoin, annex and expand with new ones. Belgrade, simply as it is, will serve as the only reference for what it could become. We will not attempt to translate the ideas of other cities, but will rather in an almost narcissistic step look for answers within. (chosen sites: Museum o1f Contemporary Art, the old fairgrounds, new fairgrounds, and Terazije Terrace) Bogdan Bogdanović once proclaimed that Belgrade is "unconscious of itself," that it possesses a sort of "inner style waiting to be stylized fully" [1]. We interpret "style" here as the legibility and clarity of identity as it is reflected in the built form, and besides the question of identity (a question to our mind rather neglected), this workshops will try in a very practical sense to tackle the issues of revitalization and meaning of "forgotten" city parts. The methodology will make use of only two tools: the plan and the collage. The selected sites will be represented as a horizontal field of possibilities in which one will be able to clearly read the relationship between new and old, while the collage will serve as a complimentary tool to illustrate all the "meaning" the plan cannot impart: of the contemporary and our memory. The interventions can be varied, radical even, because this is an experiment in which 21


we test and present how the old could drive the new, and as an approach it will allow the testing of all the possibilities of the participants, together in careful moderation and feedback. The inputs and interests of every participant will become valuable in the overall process of the workshop. Together we will discover the latent potentials of (Un)conscious Belgrade. [1] Bogdan Bogdanović, Mali Urbanizam, Narodna Prosvjeta, Sarajevo, 1958.

W.2

Neglected bigness The second half of the 20th century in Belgrade was marked by the Big works on the construction and consolidation of the city as a new, administrative capital of Yugoslavia. Modernist housing “megablocks” as, perhaps, the most important part of this endeavor, had failed to fulfill their intended purpose – to provide housing solutions for the increasingly migrating population.

Milica Leković Marko Macura Haris Piplas Snežana Timotijević Nina Radosavljević + Srna Tulić

During the 1970s, large number of workers who were building the modern Belgrade, ignored by the state and city governments, have exercised their right to the housing by settling on the outskirts, dominantly in Kaludjerica, and thus significantly defined the 22


(urban) morphology. The expansion of the city was intensified in the last two decades and as a result we have the Biggest built accomplishment in Belgrade - its Suburbs. This vast belt around the “planned Belgrade”, an outcome of what was possible to achieve, does not fit the desired city image and its population (as well as in the other areas but under different conditions) is denied the right to the city. During a period of rapid urbanization embraced with the new capital markets after 2000, architects and urban planners did not, and they still do not, act in suburban areas. New glass palaces and money castles began to sparkle (and they still shine today with the same ambitions, but with a bit fainter light), stronger than ever, giving an impression of a sea change, of The New Belgrade, the largest city in the Balkans. Bright future for the suburbs will have come later - it is just temporarily on hold. Borderlands remained on the margins of interests, perceived as a mistake that Someone will Somehow deal with Someday. Having in mind todays speculative competence of political actions, devastating discontinuity in decision making processes, we can all witness the city with a serious pretension; city that neglects its bigness; city choking in clusterization: A city that longs but refuses to change.

Counterproposal Neglected Bigness workshop confronts the aggressively imposing spatio-economic logic and snoozing reality for the Really Big projects; Its position will address the accurate recognition of the needs for the Urbanity Vitalisation [4] [5] of the borderlands [6]. Case chosen for the actions will be Kaludjerica, arguably the largest suburban settlement in the Balkans. [7] We will not focus on finding similarities and defining pretencious universal principles and solutions. Beyond Apparent homogenity of Kaludjerica we will identify (find and trace) specific urban identities; understand it through inclusive strategies and, in the end, try to interpret its urbanity interface with relevant argumentation. Authenticity of the spatio-social identity will be perceived through active interpretation of its focal points and qualitative documenting of everyday life. We will engage the vitality of (non)urban territories of Kaludjerica toward advancement, as such. Methodology: - Identify / Understand / Interpret / ACT!

________________________________________ [1] - [David Harvey: “Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution”, Verso, London, 2012] [2] - Ljiljana Blagojević: Novi Beograd: osporeni modernzam. Beograd, 2007. [3] - According to statistics from UN-HABITAT (the United Nations agency dedicated to housing issues) for 2006, 43 percent of the structures used for housing in the Serbian capital were constructed illegally. Officially, that

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means about 200,000 homes. [4] - Miloš Bobić defines Urbanity Interface as a space on edge, where a myriad of interactions between public and private domains are played out, shaping its development, use, meaning, spatial forms and territorial framework. Miloš Bobić: Between the Edges. Street-building transition as urbanity interface. Thoth, 2004. [5] - We will read to vitalisation as an implication of unsustainability and untenability of the existing principles and the need for establishing the new ones. [6] - "If we extend Goethe's metaphor ["I call architecture frozen music"] beyond architecture, we might say that urbanism is 'frozen politics.' It then becomes apparent that there is a need to develop new mechanisms that can 'unfreeze' the boundaries of this condition to open up opportunities for new forms of communication — a need to transform static conventions into dynamic interaction. Not only will this engagement with the edge create an architecture and urbanism that is greater than the sum of its parts, but, through responsible manipulation of the borderland, it will also open up the border-space that makes the 21st century democratic city possible." Urban-Think Tank on Borderlands* Trans-Borderlands: Activating the Plasticity of Urban Border-Space, 2011. [7] - We will discuss this qualification!

According to statistics from UN-HABITAT (the United Nations agency dedicated to housing issues) for 2006, 43 percent of the structures used for housing in the Serbian capital were constructed illegally. Officially, that means about 200,000 homes

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W.3

Belgrade HighLine The workshop titled Belgrade HighLine explores and questions the position of architects in the process of regenerating large urban areas in post-industrial city, seen through perspective of collaborative and participatory design of architectural interventions in public space. Based on the paradigm of positive examples of the process of urban regeneration of HighLine project in New York and in the form of three-day workshop an effort was made to simulate the conditions of work of architects in situations when one thinks and acts in a grand way, as well as to include all the relevant participants directly affected by the project in the process of designing architectural intervention. The railway line near Sava river bank in Belgrade has been selected as a location site.

Ana Nikezić Dragan Marković Nataša Janković

The aim of the workshop is to encourage students to review the position of the architect as an autonomous creator, and to foster their understanding of the architect as one of equal participants in the design process. The intention is to stimulate students' critical understanding of the social role of the architect, and to point out the socially responsible forms of architectural activities and practices. The workshop consists of three parts: the analysis, action and reaction. In the first part, the students are getting introduced to the current situation of the inherited physical environment, as well as to a wider range of active participants in this metropolitan area. The second part consists of creating a conceptual proposal to improve the observed space and it is based on the facts and data collected during the first day. The third day of the workshop is devoted to the critical analysis of spatial and programme concepts together with the participants from the first phase, as well as to preparations of the final presentation of the results of the workshop. After the workshop, the students will have the expanded understanding of the role of architects in contemporary society. They will learn some of the basic techniques of research in the form of a case study and improve the skills of critical argumentation, as well as written and oral presentations.

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W.4

Agreement Arena: Creation of Social consensus

Marija Maruna

Transition toward democratic system both market economy in Serbia after year 2000 brought to a radical change in the ways how strategic decision making processes emerge. Conditions for the spatial development based on the new fundaments and financially oriented actions are structured through the concept of cooperative dialogue. New socio-economic framework led to a change in the concept of spatial interventions as well as professional approach to spatial and urban planning. But, essential change in the process of strategic decision-making did not happen. This can be explained by a legacy of socialist system which has been reducing the role of the individual to a passive executor of decisions made at a higher level. This practice, now framed by a different socio- economic context, led to the dominance of individual interests and creation of development policies without broad consensus; commonly aimed at the interests of a small group of powerful people. Establishing consensus aimed toward decision-making in development policies is essential for any spatial development. Process of decision-making about spatial intervention is dominantly a political process; seeking for a balance among different interests aimed to resolve conflicts with a respect to the use of space. The new form of decision-making proclaims complex intra connections between the various actors and institutions, the principle of participation, transparency of information and awareness for the consequences in decisions. However, professional entities in Serbia has not yet created an efficient arena for dialogue and inputs providing for decision-making processes. The purpose of the workshop is a simulation of Arena for a dialogue; structured as a basis for comparative exchange of approaches and argumentative discussion in order to establish an agreement on the future transformation of the selected part of Belgrade. The aim is to establish a common value framework of all relevant stakeholders. Transitional turbulence characteristic for socioeconomic and political situation in Serbia calls for the awakening of the profession and proactive action in order to establish a relevant framework for making decisions on strategic development of the city. As a workshop result, the participating students will build a consensus on a transformation of specific, selected part of Belgrade and develop a graphical illustration of the future perspectives for the space, as a result of a fostering dialogue in our Agreement arena.

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W.5

Le festin de Belgrade

Nicolas Ziesel Daťa Spasojević

For tactical, critical, opportunistic, humble, creative, and a load of other reasons, people driven urban design is a hot and rising topic since a few years. But in terms of delivery it is a footnote to the enormous amount of developments and transformations occurring worldwide. Yet, through everyday and apparently random actions people are shaping the city and have the tools to deeply design it, and on an unsuspectedely BIG scale. We would like to invite you to explore and practice one of these tools during an intensive 4 day workshop. We will be secret agents, journalists, customers, farmers, town planners, politicians, graphic designers, and probably many other things. Our focus is FOOD, how and where it is grown, transformed, sold, cooked, shared, eaten, wasted. And how it is a wonderful key to living, designing and understanding cities. On day one and two, we will catalog existing uses either mainstream or underground, track the networks and relationships they involve, map their effects on the city, meet unexpected experts, talk, walk, film, record, question. On day three we will become actors in this network of social and spatial relationships so as to give back all these findings in a BIG eat & talk event on day four to as many SCAPES:LAB participants and community members as possible!

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W.6

Scales(- in between) Urban development of New Belgrade, from its beginnings, depicts variety of spatial solutions. An analysis of the present matrix, together with proposals of urban design that were given in the course of years, shows fragments of different strategies which make New Belgrade a coherent entity. Nevertheless, at the scale of the user, the same space generates rather chaotic impressions. The concept of the modernistic urban planning, in case of New Belgrade, never succeeded in solving the problem of the contact of new town with the river. Actually, it never really considered the theme of the water as unique opportunity to upgrade the quality of space.

DraganMarinčić Goran Govedarica Marta Zafirovska

The program of the workshop is to recognize present spatial phenomena in situ, and research the possible ways of treatment of the place “IN BETWEEN” (the river and the town). The overlap of different concepts, on different levels, of different scales, could generate tension which can result in creating a new context.

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W.7

Lost in vibration

Vladimir Radinović Paul Currion

„When I hear the trafiic I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking, I have the feeling that sound is acting and I love the activity of sound…I don’t need sound to talk to me” – John Cage “Not all who wander are lost”- J.R.R. Tolkin During this workshop we will explore the sounds of Belgrade city while using the psycho-geographical approach coined by Guy Debord. The idea is to listen to the city and collect its sounds while letting the city itself guides us to our next path. This way we shall capture a unique audio portrait of Belgrade. The concept of listening to a city comes from John Cage’s ideas on sound and silence and it’s also rooted in Pierre Schafer’s work with the sound collage. Both artists used field recordings in their work and opened a door to a whole new scene of contemporary sound artists and musicians that work exclusively with these tools. Today with the help of new media and modern technology the art of field recording has sprung a variety of mixed media art forms and offers artists from different fields a new and rather refreshing way to express their ideas. During the walks throughout the city we shall try to capture as many specific and authentic sounds that are in our opinion fragments of the urban symphony of Belgrade. This cacophony of sounds will mostly come from organic or mechanical sources but we hope to capture at least a few notes of Goethe’s frozen music as well. In order to participate in this workshop you do not need any previous musical knowledge just opened mind, adventurous spirit and willingness to be quiet and listen to the sounds that form the soundscape of Belgrade. As an output we will create a sound collage piece that will serve as an audio time capsule.

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III

Proceedings / Abstracts

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A.1

Tackling Urban Decay: Challenging Urban Regeneration

A.2

Big projects within the framework of Post-social transition: Values vs. Interests

A.3

Becoming a Capital: Recent Investigations

A.4

The Big story of a little place

A.5

XXS to XXL: working with multi-scalar projects

A.6

Urban-Think Tank: Design and Teaching Philosophy

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TORRE DAVID documentary Markus Kneer and Daniel Schwartz

POA

PERFORMANCE OF ARCHITECTURE and (or) ARCHITECTURE AS PERFORMANCE

Ana Nikezić Marija Maruna Vesna Jovanović Nicolas Ziesel Alessandra Cianchetta Haris Piplas

Daniel Schwartz

Radivoje Dinulović

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A.1

Tackling Urban Decay: Challenging Urban Regeneration

Ana Nikezić

Urban regeneration is usually a “slash and burn” process with a precise identity picture it focuses on whether it be economic, social and political prosperity, or tourism, creative and leisure paradise. Regeneration or gentrification as it can often become produces winners and losers. It seems that urban regeneration has become conventional wisdom within many governments and “off-the-shelf” regeneration policies are being rolled out in city after city in an effort to catalyze the revalorization of urban space. The question of local experience is hard to tackle, especially as architecture has always been universal in its meaning and is even becoming global in its appearance. Sensing spaces became a global condition instead of local identity. This lecture tries to challenge urban regeneration to become less competitive and turbulent, less planned and strategic and more acupunctural and unpredictable, to become an interval capable to connect place and people.

A.2

Big projects within the framework of Post-social transition: Values vs. Interests

Marija Maruna

In the post-social transition countries, transfer from the institutions of both socialistic economy and social structure toward the market economy institutes and democratic society has radically different qualitative patterns in promoting/offering new set of values. Big change has shifted legitimization processes of public realm; Understaning it as a collective moral imperative has changed its affirmation perspectives.

A.3

Becoming a Capital: Recent Investigations

Vesna Jovanović

For a number of years now ETH Studio Basel has studied transformation processes of contemporary cities under globalization. It is from this context that we have, more recently, started to frame a wider area and query the impact of those same globalization processes on a greater geographical scale, one that extends beyond the clear gravitational fields of the metropolis. From the position that the city is not autonomous—but always rather embedded and in relation to a wider territorial logic, with human activity therein allowing for its accumulation— we have started to outline and investigate what comprises such contemporary territories in relation to the shifts we have observed in the contemporary city. Territories have begun to reconfigure themselves in the wake of globalization, to loosen up and allow for increased mobility and metamorphosis. These processes require our professional inspection; they are as vital to understanding contemporary life as is the accumulated understanding we have in our field of the city. This lecture will try to recapitulate what is the role of the capital within the territory through examples from the institute's recent work. Key questions are how do centralities manifest themselves, and how do they exert influence on the countryside, and vice-versa. In addition, what are the physical transformations, the city growth that is currently underway in these metropolises, and in what relation do they stand with regard to the surrounding "periphery" or "hinterland." In essence, what is their role, and what is their "shape" in the territory. Showcased will be some of the student work of the more recent investigation semesters: "Red River Delta, An Urbanization of Fragile Opportunities" (2012), "Muscat and 36


Oman, Restructuring a Desert Landscape" (2013), "Belo Horizonte, Opening a Territory and Making a Capital" (2013). ETH Studio Basel investigates regions that are often ambiguous in their development and are embedded in the globalization process, both shaping it to some extent and being affected by its adverse repercussions. They are places that maintain a constant momentum without ever exploding or collapsing onto themselves, since they are connected to international energy flows that continue to evolve. These investigations are based on the assumption that contemporary cities do not develop towards a common vanishing point, but rather consolidate, transform, or adapt their specific traits. These processes are not only shaped through their local specificity or historical tradition, but also by the development of new modalities of transformation and novel forms of differentiation in the wake of contemporary global networks. Cities are hence drawn back to their own material configuration through the processes of globalization.

A.4

The Big story of a little place

Nicolas Ziesel

Starting from an almost ordinary build project we will move to the genealogy of experiences, expectations, dead ends and crazy futures it contains.

A.5

XXS to XXL: working with multi-scalar projects

Alessandra Cianchetta

AWP office for territorial reconfiguration is an award-winning practice that works across scales and genres - from large-scale strategic plans to buildings, landscapes, interiors, exhibitions and publications. We give equal weight to the substance of building and its intangible effects, addressing sensual and perceptual experiences at large urban scales. AWP also curates and designs exhibitions for major cultural institutions and regularly writes books and essays. The three partners have exhibited their work, taught and lectured at architectural venues worldwide. Run by partners Marc Armengaud, Matthias Armengaud and Alessandra Cianchetta. ww.awp.fr

A.6

Urban-Think Tank: Design and Teaching Philosophy

Haris Piplas

The Chair of Architecture and Urban Design ETH specializes in the design practice of contemporary architecture and urbanism. Their research focuses on informal settlements in the global south. The members of the ETH team are specialized in conducting research and fieldwork in different urban slum areas around the globe (India, Jordan, Palestine, Venezuela, and most intensively in Brazil). The laboratory delivers innovative yet practical solutions by combining the skills of architects, civil engineers, environmental planners, landscape architects, and communication specialists. The ETH works in global contexts by creating bridges between first world industry and emerging nations and informal urban areas. The focus lies on the education and development of a new generation of professionals, who will transform cities in the 21st century. The field work undertaken informs sociological research as an interface to the design practice. The produced knowledge is widely shared via publications (self edited newspapers, contributions through articles and a series of books published with the city of S達o Paulo). 37


TD

TORRE DAVID documentary Markus Kneer and Daniel Schwartz

Daniel Schwartz

As an offiical part of BELGRADE.SCAPES:LAB / BiG PROJECT we are proud to present a short film by directors Markus Kneer and Daniel Schwartz TORRE DAVID documentary, released by The Urban-Think Tank Chair of Architecture and Urban Design at ETH Zürich, D-ARCH. In 2012 the associated exhibit “Torre David/Gran Horizonte,” was awarded the Golden Lion for the Best Exhibit at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. Now, the U-TT Chair brings this story to audiences around the world with an unprecedented cinematic portrait of life inside the tower. In one way or another, the third tallest building in Venezuela has been under construction for over twenty-one years. While Torre David (formerly known as the Centro Financiero Confinanzas) stands at an impressive 45 floors in the heart of Caracas’ former central business district, it is unlikely that the building will ever be finished—at least not in the conventional sense. After the developer, David Brillembourg, passed away in 1993 and the financial group supporting the construction collapsed in the wake of the 1994 Venezuelan banking crisis, the tower was abandoned and became a magnet for squatters. Today, it is the improvised, continually revised home for more than 750 families living as a selforganized community in what some have called a vertical slum. That this community has not been riven by the contradictory and potent forces that surround and impinge upon it—that its members have, with great ingenuity and determination, turned a ruin into a home, albeit a precarious and marginal one—is nothing short of astonishing. Torre David, with its magnificent deficiencies and remarkable assets, presents the opportunity to consider how people can create and foster urban communities. This short film is the result of a cinematic collaboration with Profs. Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, who along with members of the U-TT Chair in the Department of Architecture at ETH Zürich, spent a year studying the physical and social organization of this ruin-turned home. Where some see only a failed development project, the U-TT Chair has conceived of it as a laboratory for the study of the informal. With the support of the Schindler Group, the U-TT Chair also explored innovative design solutions to address new models of vertical mobility. This study resulted in the book, Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities, which was named one of the best books of 2012 by The Financial Times.

FURTHER INFORMATION www.torredavid.com www.u-tt.arch.ethz.ch http://www.u-tt.com

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POA

PERFORMANCE OF ARCHITECTURE and (or) ARCHITECTURE AS PERFORMANCE

Radivoje Dinulović

Two years ago, with two of my friends and colleagues, I participated at the national competition for the Serbian exhibition at the Venice Biennial 2012, without any formal success. It was not surprise at all – we know very well that approach we develop for years in architectural education in Novi Sad is not generally acceptable, not even in our own environment. Surprise came later, last autumn, when I was invited to be a member of the national Programme council (at the same time, National jury) and participate in decision who (and what) is going to represent Serbia in Venice 2014. I accepted without any doubts, taking opportunity to observe, analyse and try to understand the ways of thinking on architecture (not only in the relation to „Fundamentals“), in Serbia, today. In my focus stepped-in not only 29 proposed entries, but also (or, in the first place) discussions among the jury members during the evaluation process. Once again I witnessed a general understanding of architecture as a visual, or as a conceptual art. That brought me back to the questions: what is the essence of architecture, what is its raison d’être, its substance, what is fundamental in (and about) architecture? And, once again, Roland Barthes’s profound idea that Photography does not touches art through Painting, but through Theatre1 reminded me that, vice versa, architecture reaches art through its functions, not through visuality. “This is why function of architecture is not only utilitarian (having in mind the fact that without utility there is no architecture), but is a complex system of answers about different existential needs – economical and ecological, aesthetical, social, cultural, psychological, philosophical, ethical, political etc. Architecture as a system of thinking about space establishes relation towards all of these problem aspects simultaneously and becomes an ideological category per se. Since human life represents a basic and essential object of architecture2, structure and final form of architecture need to be concerned as a machine3, not as a scene, sculpture or designed artefact.”4 Thinking about the function of instead of function in architecture led me to understanding of the word “function” as pluralia tantum, or even as material noun. At the same time, I understand architecture as a framework for event, a liminal space of existence. If we accepted that the event “is a dot”5, i.e. the basic element of space-time continuum, it is clear that the four-dimensional space of our existence is the space of spectacle. Radivoje Dinulović, 2014 (Fragment of text “Scene Design in Architecture”, written for Romanian architectural review “Arhitectura”, edited by professor Dana Vais) 1 Barthes, Roland: La chambre claire: note sur la photographie, Gallimard, Le Seuil, 1980 2 Milićević, Slađana: A study of architectural structure in function of experience regenaration, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, 2008 3 Le Corbusier: Toward an Architecture (Vers une architecture, translated by John Goodman) Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2007 4 Dinulović, Radivoje: The ideologycal function of architecture in the Society of spectacle, in: Architecture & Ideology (ed.: V. Mako; M. Roter Blagojević & M. Vukotić Lazar), Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, 2012 5 Hawking, Stephen: Kratka povest vremena (A Brief History of Time), Alnari, Belgrade, 2002

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IV

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In that way, I started googling around and started searching for ‘urban regeneration Belgrade’; a bunch of different pictures appeared – right on the first page everything was white, everything somehow light, in a kind of flow, it was inevitable for me to see that maybe Belgrade is seen as ‘beo grad’, as a ‘white city’ by someone, but do

you see white Belgrade around? Do you think Belgrade is white?

Then I started looking for newspaper titles and newspaper arcticles and information I could find on different places saying things such as, for instance, b92.net : Zaha Hadid regenerates Belgrade – the goal is to refine or in Serbian ‘oplemeniti’ or to do something very noble to this part of the city and give it a new content but at the same time keep the spirit of the place alive, foster wider surrounding and enforce its infrastructure. Domino magazine : The future for the Belgrade Arch daily : Marking the continuance of Belgrade’s signature modernist movement which produces a number of iconic buildings throughout the mid-20th century, the Serbian capital is proud to unveil Zaha Hadid architects’ contemporary master plan of Beko Politika: Zaha Hadid converts Beko factory into a luxurious hotel ─ is it possible to convert something that was a factory into a hotel? Or is it something else they are doing to that Beko factory? Then we have that Fujimoto first prize for the competition for the reconstruction for the Beton Hala – again white and light, but it seems that this white surface is something that just covers the morphology and topography of Belgrade, it does not reveal what we have here as a resource.

It’s again the content, but the content is not real, the content is something in between information, power and function and we have this one, which I particularly adore: Japanese designed hurricane which will blow out Belgrade; or this – a long known project for Marina Dorćol which has a title Final rendering. This is my favourite – because it is really about just rendering something – it’s not about making place, it’s not about doing something with a real place, but doing renderings, so many renderings, so many sparkling things around all of us. And the last project i will show here is Liebeskind and Gehl architects’ masterplan for the Harbour reconstruction in Belgrade – can you imagine Belgrade looking like this, or any of those pictures from before?

But then what i really adore here is this tower because its shows symbolics – it is at the intersection of Sava and Danube and then you have that diamond in between there which, I might say, is presenting Belgrade in a symbolic way; or that was an intention, which I don’t really want to discuss. What are we talking about around here, what city regeneration? Real Belgrade is grey, it’s not white, it has so many things overlapping one after another, and I was just asking myself what could be that thing that Belgrade can be so proud of, to be the resource for the regeneration, and yet something that will and in the same time represent what we are, and then I remembered that phoenix bird is born out of its own destruction, and I think Belgrade has something to do with it. Maybe we may think about Belgrade in that kind of methodological order; in order to find something to bring it alive. So let’s try to challenge the urban regeneration to become something closer to people from inside, to make it less competitive, to make it less turbulent, to make it more acupunctural, more unpredictable, more undetermined, like all things here really are.

Regeneration, in the end, is not the short term project – it is a lifelong project, it’s not a shortterm decision, or a short-term vision, as we are presented with.

This is the book Belgrade. Formal/Informal and in this book one of the authors, who is from Belgrade, but at the moment is working at the ETH Studio Basel, says (i will read this abstract because it is some kind of review of this book): This book reveals Belgrade as a city collage composed of desperate parts resulting in the interplay of formal and informal processes of construction during different historical eras. Radical acceptance of this Belgrade reality would establish the basis for the formulation of a new strategy for the development of the city in which inherent relationship between formal and informal could be regulated as to improve society’s attitude towards the immediate environment – the authors do not exhibit such a strategy – they do not show the methodology, revealing the unplanned strategy or something that is not possible, leaving the inhabitants and people of Belgrade to find it for themselves.

Representative example in this matter – down here you can see two buildings in this picture – old sugar factory and printing factory BIGZ in former Yugoslavia. 43


BIGZ is completely reconstructed in some kind of factory-for-creativeindustries way, like some sort of contemporary post-Fordist creative industry. Can we claim BIGZ as a new representation of regenerated Belgrade? Is this going to be an open field for Belgrade? Open for us? Or is it completely closed and fragmented from Belgrade? There are different marginal lifestyles, informal economies, artistic experimentation, deliberately open transformation of public spaces, there are different movements that can help us see how informal can help us, but can it really help us? In my opinion something in between will help, something in between the ruined, the undetermined and something that brings the life of tomorrow. So, in this manner, I will show an insert from one film that was filmed here during the eighties – Nešto između (Something in-between). In the beginning the grandmother is talking about something about playing cards, it’s called something inbetween. You give one card and the other one gives one card also, but if you cannot negotiate between those two cards, then maybe, you can have the third card, but the third card cannot be seen, it is something in-between.

something in between people and buildings to take crucial role in future regenerations.

That is what we are looking for –

Thank You.

Appendix 1 Tackling Urban Decay: Challenging Urban Regeneration

Click Here 44


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We’ve entered into democratic system – democracy, which means we now need to involve a lot of stakeholders and a lot of different opinions into the decision making, if we are aware of all the consequences of spatial transformation. On the other hand, we are introduced to the market economy, which means we have a lot of small interests. So, we have a lot of stakeholders with different interests and different powers. Architects and/or urban planners are only one of participants in this process of spatial development. There are banks, we have land owners, entrepreneurs, investors, communal services, state agencies, local government, environmental agencies, local communities, users, construction companies, real estate agencies. It is important to underline that. Why is that important? Different position bring up to large impact on the determination of the public interests which should be negotiated. I will present a story about one BIG project in Belgrade and, of course, different ideas and interests between its stakeholders. First, we had a big investor who came to Belgrade, or he could be from Belgrade, but we can’t really know it or claim where he is from. He became interested in attractive location close to the river, found one; but that location was occupied by inadequate function which had to be removed. And then we’ve seen strong pressure for Urban Plan changes, to remove that function from that location. And they created beautiful images about the future of that space which they presented on the real estate fair in Cannes and at the same time through media, which is a new really important stakeholder. What is really interesting are all the arguments that have been used by different stakeholders, which are really opposite. For example, they had a group of stakeholders from local government ─ officials from local government, which means they are politicians. Not experts, but politicians. We have here two persons. The first is the Public Attorney, the second is the Mayor and they got in fight on investor interests. Public Attorney said: “In this process the investor will get the right to build on that location, the city will lose several hundred million euros, no one should dare to donate such a huge property”. Mayor said: “No one can buy the land for a small amount of money and take from Belgrade citizens’ pockets five hundred million euros”. In terms of interest and power, their position is defending public interests and their power is institutional, they can deliver official city decisions.

From the other side, we have experts from local government who argue in favour of investor interests. For example, the City Secretary for Environmental Issues said: “Of course, an inappropriate activity doesn’t have a positive impact on environment”. City Architect said “It is not logical that such function exist in the city center – from the same point of the quality of the city, relocation is a highly desirable process, everybody will benefit from the new function, city and the citizens will get the infrastructure and investors will make profit. At the end, relocation of inappropriate activity is an old idea, it’s not new idea”. Than we had another group of experts, also from local government, who were neutral. City Manager said something like this: “Location must have a clearly defined ownership of the property. After that, space will be converted into an exclusive part of the city”. Director of the Urban Institute said: “Ok, it is not possible to build relying on General Urban Plan. It is necessary to generate Detailed Regulation Plan”. All of them are in the local government, so they should have interest in making strategic decisions in development of the city. But, because of their neutral position no decisions or statements were really made. Then we could see some officials from the State government; actually politicians from national, higher level which should be more powerful than local. For example, we had Minister of Economy who claimed: “The law does not allow me to say no if someone wants do it; if someone comes, I must say OK”. Privatization Agency said: “We have to wait to see if there are facts which require a real comment, otherwise we can approve that”. Interest of this groups is economic development of the country so their power is really huge, they have institutional power; they are executors and legislation authorities. So their inputs were also in favor of investors interests. We have another group of stakeholders - independent experts. Who are they really? They are, for example, real estate experts or some professors of economy and so on. They confronted the investor interests. It is really strange because we had experts from local government who argued in favour of stakeholders interests, independent experts were against. What did they say? Real estate experts said: “In this case the new construction involved relocation of urban structure , no one asked citizens of Serbia if they are willing to do it and spend a large amount of money for the investor profit – in terms of the costs of infrastructure relocation”.

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So, we’ve seen how they fight against investor interests. Professor of economy said something similar “Investor got this land in an unfair trade, no one else was in a position to compete. By this, investor is multiplying his profit only because someone of authority representatives promised that he will be able to build an exclusive complex at this location.” Their interest is commonly the promotion of their expertise, actually they are working as independent consultants and they don’t have such power, they only have this unengaged knowledge power which is not really efficient. I may not have to say that but it’s true. Finally, we have The Investor who really had to be skilful in those circumstances and, of course, he took his arguments through investor representative. He said: “We have a lot of economic damage because of lies that are being told about us. We don’t have any agreement with local officials; we just want to build a commercial and residential complex as it has been planed for a long time ago. We want to become partners with Belgrade in developing the most important construction project as this one surely is. We always accept a constructive dialogue with the city and state representatives.” Their interest is clear - they want profit maximization and they have power of money.

Do you maybe recognize the story? Of course. Ok

If we analyse the positions of those actors in these three sections; against, in favour and neutral position. We had the vision and opposition between local and state government, they said opposite things. If we put them in this power - interest matrix we can see who is the most powerful - of course investor, than officials from state government and officials from local government, politicians and investors but they have different opinions about this project. Less powerful, but with a lot of interests, are experts from local government and independent experts. So you are sure that you know the story? This was the story of the Belgrade Port. So what is the conclusion?

We need to create a new approach to urban planning activity. Planning should be a mediation in decision making processes. We have to create agreement arena which we will actually simulate in our workshop, and establish consensus about urban polices. We need a new role of experts that should change from arbitrary to mediating and adoption of the principal of collaboration in the urban planning processes.

Appendix 2 Big projects within the framework of Post-social transition: Values vs. Interests

Click Here

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The institute is run by four professors: Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Roger Diener and Marcel Meili, who are two chairs and it has existed for a very short period of time – since the year 2000. It was founded in the city of Basel initially to understand the urbanization or the contemporary realities in Switzerland itself. At the beginning, and for six whole years, the institute was studying Switzerland and the result of it was also a publication but even more than a publication it was a kind of a map that evaluated the physical reality of the entire territory of the country, not only of the urban systems; this reading was also something that was unusual in the country at the time and it still brings up a lot of public debate. The most important polemics goes to the relationship between the city and the landscape in a way. The work with the students is the base of the pyramid and the teaching process itself; It produces all of the input, all of the knowledge that you’ve seen, for example in the publication of Belgrade. The Swiss book is called Switzerland - an urban portray and, in fact, it is a map that calls for re-reading of the country, based on these systems and how they relate and on how to identify, let’s say, this aggregate state of different realities overlapping. It creates what we are now calling territorial type or types of landscape, but at that moment of time it was not sure what the research would be about, so it tried to distillate different entities and, of course, describe them again as a system. The method is very down-to-earth, you really start by looking at what’s there and then try to understand why it looks like that way and what are the processes and who are the people that make this. My todays lecture can open up the field to the cultural context, because

This is kind of image in the public mind which is this ideal of what the country is; of this kind of beautiful, cute Swiss landscape and the discussion was about the protected landscape or this idea of beauty which is Alps, for instance. In fact, it is almost a kind of insufficient system where the Alpine resorts are the only active things still left in the area and most other places have been degrading and most of the life and the concentration of the population is in the urban systems that you saw in red before. So this is the mapping of the tourism. And then, to quite simply jump beyond those first six years, the institute started to investigate other contexts and to wonder what the contemporary city is. The most recent research in terms of scales is pretty much related to the Swiss investigation in basically trying to understand what actual role of the city is in this kind of bigger territorial logic.

… *Event equipment could not load files from Vesna’s presentation. We’re really sorry and we’re looking forward to introducing more. For more info: http://www.studio-basel.com/

what we think a capital is or how we think a city should be also comes from the culture.

So we identified those urban zones: on one hand, around Zurich, on the other hand, the lake of Geneva, Lausanne and Geneva, and the third entity somehow had to do with the city of Basel which is on this kind of border between France, Germany and Switzerland; which creates a kind of system within these two other countries much in the same way as you see in the south of Switzerland with the area of Ticino, in fact feeling much more influence from Milano than it does from other parts of Switzerland. It is much more logical if you consider geography with the Alps in fact creating this kind of cultural difference.

Appendix 3 Becoming a Capital: Recent Investigations of ETH Studio Basel Click Here

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_Marko Macura: Your participation in Belgrade Scapes Lab is important in many ways. First, it is an honor to have you here for the first time even though you’ve studied in Belgrade, but it is also important to present your international, or more a trans-national competence within the event’s topics. As we’ve heard, you studied in Belgrade, and after that went to Berlage, Basel and throughout. Maybe you can introduce the importance of this background in your research. How is this knowledge/experience transferred and disseminated? _Vesna Jovanović: In terms of the work of Studio Basel, I think it makes the difference whether they work in Switzerland, where they participate in the public debates, develop the competence based on knowledge that came from phenomenological research on what the city really is, what is the landscape, where are the people and how can you talk about the managing these regions. So, I think the attempt there is quite clear; and in terms of continual quest for knowledge and looking at these foreign contexts, it becomes very complicated and fast to actually create these exchanges. So, we always have to be aware of naivety, like when Swiss people come to Belgrade and try to understand it in two weeks. Therefore, the intention actually becomes very humble. It becomes really just about trying to understand this and to see how it fits into general discussion on what contemporary way of life is, and how our cities (territories) are created. Therefore, it actually takes a lot of care not to push any conclusions or not to propose something in this context, but really just to create this exchange. This fieldwork (that you saw in the final package resulted in the book) is done with the series of local experts at universities without which you couldn't really discover anything because just looking at the house doesn't tell you a lot, so, actually, it's a kind of process of knowledge exchange. In terms of that, being used to something else is probably the biggest ambition that you can have with this; to create something that then, perhaps, can be worked on further. There is a publication on Belgrade and if it is used in public debate and discussion and if it is a point for further research then, I think, the Institute will consider that it has achieved something with it. Or, if it's also used in an academic way, then again it's a success. Marko Macura: How can we then learn from these contexts of highly emancipated both profession and research themes in Switzerland and how can we challenge them with exchange that is relevant? Can we speak about same aims within different contexts?

Ana Nikezić: I think that maybe we are missing one point here. Education does not have a goal in itself, it is something else. I think that each individual should decide on the importance of his or hers education. Each of us presented another kind of perspective: one critical, one negotiable, one analytical. I think from all of this you can learn something and you can choose your perspective and, I think, education can teach you how to be sure what to do or how to be better in that manner. It cannot have goal in itself. Maybe you can ask a question and each of us can answer from our different perspective. I'm not sure that we can talk about it on such a global level. I'm not sure, maybe we can discuss it here. Vesna Jovanović: Studio Basel right now is working on a publication of several case studies and the title of this publication has the word "specificity" in it. In fact it's something that in ideological field stands opposed to Koolhaases generic city. It almost says that globalization and this kind of exchange to certain extent produces generic spaces. A lot of the projects that you showed are something to be expected by globalization processes making an impact on local places. And actually what the work of the institute showed, for example, in the Belgrade research is that there is a way, a process that every place has in absorbing this global energy and transforming it to something locally specific. In that sense, in fact, maybe it becomes not comparable, maybe Casablanca and Belgrade cannot be compared, which is something that the Institute tried. Before the Belgrade publication there was "four cities" book which was about Belgrade, Havana, Casablanca and Hong Kong. It becomes clear (the initial hypothesis of the Institute) that cities have their specificities. To some extent, it's true that you might have an impossible challenge when you want to say something in a case study comparative way. The existence of these projects, which to us definitely don't look like Belgrade and the thought that you had about who are the people deciding things about the city, is, of course, also a cultural debate. I think the reality is that not all of these projects are being built. It is a kind of global pressure that you see, which comes in renderings; then again it's the process in the city how these get absorbed and actually what does in the end happen in the city. As far as I know, none of these projects have a reality for the moment. The sugar factory? Ok. I think it's an interesting discussion because in one way a parallel to Belgrade. They both have the spirit of transition where they are, in a sense, figuring out how to react to this global pressure. I don't know if it's about a crisis in society... maybe it's not even about that, maybe is really just about space and time that is needed to discuss it somewhere. Marija Maruna: For me, what really is important is to think about the position of professionals now in Serbia, what they are doing, actually, what they are not doing. They are humiliated, they are not working in their field, they suffer, they are trying to find jobs, most of them are going abroad, students are preparing to go abroad to find their jobs. I think we have to be aware of this situation.

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We don’t teach our students how to deal with this situation – the real situation and the reality in Serbia. The reality in Serbia is complex and we can't just copy models from abroad. We can't copy any model or solution or methodology, it’s impossible. We have to find our way and for that reason we have to engage directly to what is our surrounding that we are facing with. I made a little joke during my presentation and I told you a story about one big project and probably you thought that is THE big project in Belgrade. But what was the point? We are surrounded by big projects in our city and we have to face that complexity, and to start to react before it happens, not to wait for it to come, not to be paralyzed by decisions of politicians. We have to start questioning their decisions, their ideas and to be proactive. That's my message for you. _Milica Leković: On these renderings we've seen surplus of capital, obtaining its spatial and visual component. Although we were presented a load of different stakeholders, somehow we can easily get to the impression that decision making power is always reduced to investors and business-oriented politicians. Our profession is not even there and if it is, we're just rendering (producing) this imagery of this surplus in space. We are not trying so hard to do other things, we're just feeding this spoon between politicians and economists, making it visible. What is your view on that, how can we move ourselves as professionals apart from that? _Ana Nikezić: I think that we all are coming from different backgrounds and we are talking about different things, but actually the content is quite the same. We are talking about Belgrade and regeneration, but from different perspectives. During my lecture, I was talking about architecture and just architecture, nothing else and where I want this discussion to go would be: why can't we try to develop our own language of architecture that is suitable for this city, not global language of architecture? We cannot make Japanese or US architecture here; we talk Serbian, not English so our architecture has to be from here. It's not about politics, it's not about line on the paper. It's about what can you take from here and make it architecture.

I just saw regeneration represented visually or through our profession, but sometimes beyond regenerations we can see market capitalism, we can see other intentions, so I'm asking you: is there anything we can do in this bleak picture? _Ana Nikezić: I don't think that we can do something. _Vesna Jovanović: I don't think capitalism is related to identity or what is ours and I don't think it's a political system. _Milica Leković: Capitalist architecture does have some shape which is universal. You were talking about this generic city. I can see loads of same cities like this Belgrade on water popping up in Afghanistan and in different contexts. They are completely non-contextual. It's just the same architecture being distributed all over the world. _Vesna Jovanović: If you asked about the role of us as professionals, I think that important step is to really understand reality that we operate in. And If that reality is capitalism than let's try to think of a productive way to operate in that reality. If we don't like that reality than let's become politicians instead. _Q: I think that we have responsibility and politics is big part of this reality, especially in the fields of architecture. I totally disagree that we can avoid that topic. I think that it's not fair to talk about Mišković project and not to talk about Belgrade on water because we have different situations. Maybe we were lucky that we had opposite interests in Mišković project and, in this moment, it seems like there are no opposite interests for this new big project and we are quiet as professionals. I think that we should not stay quiet, especially on Faculty, with students. I think that we have to be proactive. I really have a problem with this kind of stepping back from everything that is not really comfortable for us. Ana: I'm not a politician. I'm not economical expert. I know that there should be some economists who are capable of dealing with it in a professional way. We can be active, our voice can be heard, but I'm a professional. You were asking me what I can do professionally. I can do nothing except to make architecture better looking or better being. Participant: …And to withdraw. _Ana Nikezić: And to withdraw. That's true. That's why we are here, I don't think it's something we are negotiating here (whether we are allowed or not). _Marija Maruna: I want to be radical. I think we should get our hands dirty and go to politics.

_Milica Leković: You were talking exclusively about architecture and power of architects. Transformation of the city implies other mechanisms. I just didn't see this mechanisms included; didn't see them tackled. 55


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This is basically the timeline of our office. As you can see, the more we lose competitions, the more we earn money, which is a good business model, I believe, but it is also because in France we have this wonderful opportunity. There is a quite a lot of work and still quite a lot of competitions for architects. Since we are getting so big, we are spreading all over the world, mainly to talk, like tonight, not to build, except at the end of one conference this fall in Mexico, the students of Architecture in Querétaro built a community center in one of the settlements in the suburbs of the city. The first part will be about my relation with education.

I was educated in the time when our professors believed that the city was made by architects. At the same time, we were

learning that, all over the world, there are maybe, more economic forces and things that are shaping the city, and now, we have the strong conviction that the time has come to work with people to build the city. For that, you have to change a bit the way you see education. France is a country where education is very much academic. I started teaching architecture with children in elementary school, in a sort of an exchange program. It was very interesting to see how they will react. They didn`t know anything about space, about their body. The project theme was a question that can have a lot of answers. We tried to work on that with them. I am not an official teacher, I am more engaged in parallel things and I believe that, when we teach, the important thing is that you are always relating to people. You are not only in the sphere of architecture and what you do at the end of a project is almost as important as the project itself. My second experience was in Mumbai. We made two week workshop with the Architecture School of Versailles, studying the use of public space in this really big city. The challenge was to explore the city and make a book in only two weeks. On more relaxed level, I teach in Belleville. We did a national competition with the students of the fifth year. It was quite a big challenge. They had to have a different approach to the project than they usually do. It is working quite well because last year, we had two students who have won a prize in the national competition. Now we are starting to teach in an engineering school, and it becomes a little less fun, because you have to make really structured lessons.

I had a really incredible revelation that I would like to share with you. It is about the Architectural School of Talca, in Chile. This During one of our trips,

is a really poor neighborhood of Chile, that is not far from Santiago and they made totally new pedagogy that is only ten years old. It is based on the idea of not teaching architecture by teaching the space, but by teaching how to make space. They have really strong beliefs in the idea that if you are in a poor area, you cannot spend much, you cannot have your students spend a lot of money on architectural material that is not useful to the community. They also have this exercise of building a public space in only one month with an allocation of 3000$ and they have to find the clients (the community in which they will engage work). In this way, they make this poetic and also useful places. The really remarkable thing is that to graduate there, costs about the same thing – graduating costs are 3000$ in Chile. This amount of money allows 20-30 m2 to be build, so actually, to graduate, you have to find a client and build something for him. I will get back to my practice, apart from teaching. KOZ is my head office, but we share the place with five other offices. With one of the offices we do very specific projects, which are more or less landscape issues, like this visitors center, or this First World War memorial, this museum in the natural setting in the middle of France, crematory, which is very hard and deep project, and our most sustainable one – which is this arena for cycling in the Olympic Games in Madrid – but they lost the Olympic Games. The whole idea was that it would be totally temporary and recyclable, reused for emergency places around the world, so that Olympics would stop being a waste of money, which should be given to the people. We are also in another collective which is called French Touch. We publish a yearbook every year. We collect many projects and present them. We had the opportunity to go to the Biennale in Venice and have an event in the French Pavilion and to also make this sort of experience of exhibition that can travel around the world. The whole idea was that the secret object of architecture, which is the model, the thing you usually present to the client, should be given to the public and one can just manipulate with it any way they want.

The first thing I really like to say is that architecture is a lot of pleasure, a lot of happiness and I want to thank all the students who voted for

us for the Building of the Year. It was really a deep thing for us, because it is a story that has started almost when we started our office. We just made small wooden houses like that, and we have just met with this incredible material, with the pleasure to work with it, and with the pleasure to work with people who build with it.

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So the project was this courtyard that was a total trash, it had to be torn down. When we took the project, we had the feeling that we would fail if we didn`t give back this sort of social backyard life that still existed. It was a project for thirty social houses and it involved incredible number of people. So, you have this long and big garden exposed to the south and these boxes that go out and they are all made of wood. Inside, the top of the boxes becomes a terrace for the apartment. We really did a lot of hard planning work just to get natural light everywhere, even in the toilets, which is not quite usual for collective housing projects. It totally changes the way you live in your house. Since architects are really reluctant to make really performing plans, the developers do the plans for them – this is an example of a plan made by a private developer in France trying to make the smallest two-bedroom apartment possible that copes with all the regulations. We do a lot with Ecosistema Urbano from Madrid who are engaged in something they call urban social design. They have done this really interesting list of ten things you can do to make things go better. We have done two things with them the last year. The first thing is in the north of France, in the city with an old harbor, a city that has been bombed in the Second World War. The thing we made was called Urban Scenario for a small place there. What stroke us first was that with the urban renovation the whole town has become a very dry place with no sense of nature. The problem we had with the place was the enormous amount of money we had to use for this small place. The first thing we said was: “So OK, we have to make a big table so things can happen and children can play and have a lot of activities around the table. And this will cost just half the budget. And with the rest of the budget we are going to develop a line that will be put around the city – it will be made of chairs and they will be free to take away”. Our hope was that they would be taken all around the city. They will have a QR code and you will be able to find where they are so some sort of a treasure hunt of chairs should happen. The third thing was the problem of this not even slightly green city. So what could we do? We made a mobile garden. A few times a year there is going to be a festival and you will be able to take the plants and plant them near where you live. In this way, the area will become very lively and multipurpose.

The next thing is a two and a half day workshop. This workshop happened in a small city in France. Same thing - a lot of unemployment. They had a social housing complex that was not bad, but because people were moving and people were arriving there was a sort of big social tension. The workshop happened in the middle of this city, with the idea of how this problem can be handled in the next thirty years. What sort of process was possible? We were free to do whatever we wanted. There were four teams, including ours, and each implemented different strategies. We made a proposal to change things in this area: putting the cars in the shade, lawns and gardens in the places exposed to sun, big plaza; how to upgrade the old houses which you do not want to destroy. We tried to explain the neighbours that this was not a project where you get the key, you have to have a process, so we also explained what kind of process it was and, also that in a participatory process since you invest very little in the beginning ─ making workshops, having meetings, making small actions doesn`t cost you a lot… it doesn`t make you engage into very complicated construction work. It is a way of testing, getting feedback, just moving a bit further. At first it looked like it was going to take longer, but we had a scheme that showed them it would not take so much longer than the usual way.

App 4 The Big story of a little place Click Here

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First, a brief introduction of the AWP office. We´re a multidisciplinary team and we work on a variety of scales. We do public realm, architecture, landscape installations and strategies, territorial planning and master planning or rather frameworks (I don´t like the word master planning because it has something rigid in it). And all the partners in the office do a lot of teaching, research, writing and exhibition curating. I mostly teach at North American schools like the Cornell University or Columbia University, and at the Berlage.

We are very much under the influence of the works of Walter Benjamin and his way of reading and experiencing the city and its public spaces, in particular. In his unfinished The Arcades Project, he talks a lot about the atmosphere, things that are intangible, subtle and that constitute the essence of the city. We are also interested in networks, both physical and non-physical, as they define the territory. Other recurrent references are from cinema – The Passenger, a film from 1975, by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. A war reporter, played by Jack Nicholson, finds himself on a square in provincial Spain, where he dies. It´s a very famous scene, both technically and in the history of cinema. A long taketracking shot goes from inside out and back again, following the protagonist´s death. Our approach to the territory, to framing it, can be found in this scene and so can our philosophy (transmitted in the words of Lina Bo Bardi) that the intangible, immaterial and hidden is what

really matters.

The first project is a public project, won through a public competition. This is a big park in Poissy, near Villa Savoye which has several hectares (113 ha). This place is changing dramatically because there is a huge pressure for housing. We won this competition to design a series of small buildingsfolies (museum, floating restaurant, observatory, visitor center, kiosk, information center). There are 12 buildings scattered around the park. In a way, we wanted to push people from one place to another to discover this really large park. Because of limited budget, we decided to work with timber frames; combining these frames, we would obtain different structures and different experiences, relying on simplicity and prefabrication. This was a really small scale, because the biggest building had only 1000m2

The following project is another project we are working on, in La Défense, Paris (160 ha).

It is a business district in Paris created in the 50s, after the war, when there was no available land for business premises in Paris; president (Georges) Pompidou wanted to give a new image of Paris wants to deliver an image as a modern capital with towers of steel and glass. It resembles Jacques Tati, s films Playtime (which was shot there) and My Uncle. La Défense extends over four municipalities, which are politically opposed, there is a certain tension reflected in the territory. The main characteristic of the site is a 30ha slab, which is a roof of a labyrinthic multy-layered underground structure that contains mainly traffic infrastructure. We were asked to do a plan-guide (a framework plan) so we started studying this area and we put together all the study materials from 1964 (note: year of the first and only other existing masterplan) until today. The issue was to give a framework, a series of new developments, new actions that would transform the perception and the physical aspect in some points of this area and to make it attractive because, right now, it looks obsolete. It is a place where everything is separated and there are almost only companies’ headquarters, but it is also a place of great transit and importance to Greater Paris.

We produced at least 2000 maps of the area and compared it to all similar business districts around the world. The

second stage was to put together all this data, publish them and make them available to people. This kind of project takes a long time – several decades. From the very beginning, we talked about

creating a climate for

this place. It is cold it lacks life – from 5 PM there´s no

one there. Therefore, we needed to give strategies – the first one was to redefine the ground and make connections with all surrounding neighbourhoods; the second, to reinterpret the great axis and finally, to bring the nature in the district (not necessarily in the form of vegetation, but as art and lighting). By 2020, a great part of it will be developed.

This next project is a park in Lille, northern France, and it is a park for the Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art the most important museum for outsider art in Europe. It is a landscape project, but it doesn´t contain little colorful plants and flowers because we hate this kind of vegetal pornography that often landscape architecture tends to show. The client wanted to put more art art in the existing

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sculpture park and use it as an outdoor gallery for the museum. The idea of framing objects and scenes in the park was inspired by Antonioni´s Blow-Up. We created a geometrical topography, this sort of traveling promenade that allows views and fosters the intimacy between different works of art and spectators inside and outside. We also created a water promenade. It is a simple path but quite essential for us, because it connects this park with other neighbouring parks and, at the same time, with the city. La Defénse again, the project is on the great axis, but on the other side of La Grande Arche. So this space is used in a very flexible way. The bike tour starts here, kids playing judo, there are markets, music, all sort of activities. When there is no activity because of the climate it is just an urban symbol. It has become a landmark, people have adopted it. We won the competition to build the public space for all this new development. It is very difficult site for there are many invisible things that got more than a half of the budget (because we were building on a slab, we spent 8 million euro on the polystyrene, to deal with the structural loads). We decided to create a ramp whose shape challenges the axiality. This is something we both liked and, at the same time, were obliged to do because of the big infrastructure that is too difficult to move and 20m of height difference between bottom and top levels. The official plan proposed a big, monumental staircase. We didn’t want that, first because it is not welcoming for the people with reduced mobility, and second, if the intention is connecting two neighborhoods of Paris, you don’t want such a big obstacle as monumental staircase. The shape of the ramp is determined by the slope. At one point, it becomes a building with a space for activities underneath. The other principle was preserving Gilles Clément´s garden and introduce small folies (the law permits structures up to 300m2 around the axe) that would activate the site. The last one is our oldest project. We did it within the context of a winning competition as well. It is in Norway, Stavanger. A steering group of clients asked us to build a series of objects using timber but in a more contemporary, forward-looking way. We won the competition for a construction on a main pedestrian road. The city needed canopy and something to activate the public space using timber. We won with this object here which is very simple and at the same time very complex. It is a shelter, a place where plenty of activities may take place, but without defining the activities precisely.

We decided to use not only timber but glass as well, to activate this object at night and to transform it in a lantern to be seen from every part from the city. So this was a manifesto for the public space more than a design itself. You can see the strategy here. It is very different from the design strategy in the Lille Park. This is very designed… a crazy amount of detailing; it was possible to do it in Norway, with that client, who was very keen about doing this kind of things. The inspiration came from sort of archetypical annexes to the farm where they kept the food to store it away from animals. So it is a sort of uplifted house. But we made it very simple with this grid that has no primary or secondary structure. It is 9x9 double-layered grid in timber with glass shingles on it, placed very simply. The support structure doesn’t coincide with the angle of the canopy, but it´s pushed a little bit onwards, becoming a bench as well. In this case the object is very designed, it has lots of details. But, at the same time, the design hasn’t suffocated the use, which is the most important thing for us because many times you have design for the sake of the design and that is wrong because you want places to be activated and used by people. Finally, a design can be done for several reasons, issues or agendas ─ it can be representation, it can be sort of showing iconic buildings for matters of power. In the brief

we wanted manifesto for public space where new practices could take place, new practices could be invented, and started. We wanted a we wrote for the competition, we said that

design that would enable unplanned events and unplanned practices. And of course, there is the issue of the atmosphere and the transformation of the object during the night.

Appendix 5 XXS to XXL: Working with multi-scalar projects Click Here

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Our team in Zurich is very interdisciplinary and very international and we are trying to cover really the global scale of issues in the cities. I will try to show you how we combine our data and research and translate them into design and planning not solutions, but rather scenarios which address these issues. A previously well-known blue planet is changing into urban planet where for the first time in history we have more than 50% of people living in cities; we have so-called megacities, cities that have more than 10 million people. How can we than talk about sustainability in the city, what is it? The economists talk about economic sustainability of the cities, sociologists and others talk about social sustainability, politics of course is very watchable so they come to the politics of the city; landscape architects, ecologists and scientists talk about environmental sustainability of the city; but our impression is that, very often, the social, the human scale of the cities is lacking discussions. What we’re doing is zooming into human and social scale by including demographic and anthropological research, adding it to our projects and trying to be really close to the problems of the city and understanding it better. We are very much interested and are introducing a movie medium as a very important tool to communicate architectural and urban ideas. We are not really professional movie makers but what we try to do is to translate our research not only into sort of good looking images of renderings but also sort of showing a research process in a form of movie. Our primary role (in our base in Switzerland) at the ETH, a public technical university, is to educate young Swiss students. In the sense of knowledge-transfer we go beyond problematics specific for Switzerland and Europe, trying to educate future architects and urban planners to think on a global scale. We developed a methodology for students and young professionals, trying to sensibilize them for the context and give them a strategy rather than a manual or guideline. Rather than focusing on own architectural language but how as a young architect to fit into this very complex scheme of influences and stakeholders in the planning and design process: NGOs, politicians, economists, community leaders. The strategies we bundle in a toolbox of urban operative tools. The process itself is divided to identifying, understanding, interpreting; and the fourth step is to act and solve problems.

We teach the process and the toolbox in our course called Urban Stories, which I coordinate at the ETH, where we teach contemporary urban design. It is a theoretical course, which we try to make applicable and inspiring for students and young professionals; to interpret the city for students in a very kind of proactive way rather than teaching dry theory. Another challenge is to establish cross-connections between the tools fostering knowledge transfer. We realized that a biggest difficulty for a student is to bring this experience and knowledge from Caracas, Tokyo, New York, Sao Paolo back to Zurich or to Belgrade. Learning from knowledge-transfer sounds very ilegitimate and even romantic but the key is the applicability of ideas, e.g. of microplanning ideas we have developed for Zurich which were applied in Sao Paolo. Looking at history of Caracas for example, starting in 1949 and ending with 2005 shows a growth of numbers where now 60% of the people life in informal settlements. Of course we have to be really careful with numbers as they are just approximations. I was not surprised, while conducting empirical research in Kaluđerica, when I realized that life conditions of the refugees who came in the 1990s reminded me of Caracas. ‌.

Appendix 6

Urban-Think Tank: Design and Teaching Philosophy Click Here

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_Marko Macura: Today we have heard loads of new perspectives in terms of both research and design and teaching philosophies. So, my first question, my first remark would be the question of the authorship, in terms of an individually positioned contribution, personal participation within the specific project. The whole SCAPES:LAB platform is networked in its structure, it’s not hierarchical, not vertical or horizontal. What I would address here is the importance of networking and forming the specific teams with each project you do. Haris is, for example, working in a really huge collective. Loads of people are working within the Urban Think Tank. All of them have some sort of position and responsibility. We’ve heard questions on what is the position of the future architect. Is he an author, an individual, or a part of collective effort on doing things? _Haris Piplas: 19th century picture of the builder, planner, maintainer, and architect doesn’t really exist anymore. I showed this complicated scheme of many people involved in design, research, building process. What we are trying to teach our students is to know how things actually work. The picture of an architect who does everything, doesn’t exist. The role of an architect should be demystified. _Marko Macura: We can here speak about this first SCAPES:LAB, happening in one space; space that became place through all this people working together; Producing answers, questioning each other. The results will be a part of one collaborative contribution. Is this what we should expect for the future? _Nicolas Ziesel: Today, things are quite the same as when I studied architecture. You do exercises, then you interpret and become author. That’s how most of architecture schools still work. I had this terrible experience one month ago, I was in my former school in Paris, with students, and they asked me what I did in school back then and they said they are still doing the same thing! And the world is changing rapidly. The school is like a monastery. Victor Hugo defines it as a wonderful place where you have the French motto of the République: liberté, egalité, fraternité. But you don’t have that freedom really. _Alessandra Cianchetta: 98% of the built environment is not designed by architects. But, we are acting like consultants, because we are not using our money, we don’t have a direct power, we work for someone. We have this position of being weak and strong

at the same time and we can deal with manipulation, which can also be positive. So this image of romantic, front-runner, author– I’m not speaking of the starchitects –doesn’t exist, but in a way it still exists, because architecture is still elitist, it needs faces. I believe in collaboration. But collaboration with other architects is very difficult because it is an ego struggle. _Marko Macura: Our first BGSL theme is titled BiG projects which is quite referral to the Grand Projets in Paris. We have this highly politicized, ongoing reconstruction project of the riverfront in the Sava amphitheatre which is highly questionable, but lacks discussions. At the moment, we know nothing about it; but apart from that discussion, maybe this can be a possibility to discuss more on influences and politics in architecture and urban planning which Haris, for example, mentioned by referring to Hugo Chavez and Doppelmeier company. _Haris Piplas: It’s always about politics and architecture. Architects are interested in everything: ecology, philosophy… But in the end the design is produced in the design office. But if you really want to have an impact on society, you have to have the information, to be involved with stakeholders. Many things are lost in the way. If you get involved in the earlier phases when things are being discussed than it’s easy to discuss it with large institutions. They decide how city is going to look like. Industries are also interested in architecture, BMW, Google, Audi... So, be brave and get involved. Try to do something rather than just making a critique. _Alessandra Cianchetta: What is built is just a reflection of the society at large – politics, economics... Architects would do whatever for whoever (P. Johnson - “Architects are pretty much high-class whores. We can turn down projects the way they can turn down some clients, but we've both got to say yes to someone if we want to stay in business.”). That’s an issue that has to be considered. Moreover, cities should make an effort to create proper planning regulations that should not to be too rigid. I’d say Paris is a bit rigid for my taste. This is also an issue. Cities should think and rethink planning policies in a flexible way, to adapt to rapid changes, to be opportunistic. You have reality and you have to play with reality. You have to find the way to manipulate it and act positively on it. _Vesna Jovanović: Tonight, we have heard many unconnected approaches. 30-40 years ago the role of an architect was so much clearer and now we are discussing it as we are confused. What is positive and uplifting is that we are very free to define what are we interested in working with and to find an approach and to be active in it. It is uplifting to know about my profession. It assures me and it doesn’t confuse me about our role in society.

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_Marko Macura: Normalizing this state-market demands within the society... Urban Think Tank referred and stated that if we refer to architecture as frozen music then urbanism is frozen politics. Our idea here is to challenge and question architecture as part of culture. Although some find it boring, I insist on the importance that this whole platform is being held in the Cultural Center, not at University or professional premises. _Q1: I have very simple question, for which I get very different and alwUžays surprising answers. We are dealing with current problems, thinking about future, but what do you think will be the next step of human beings living in urban/rural areas? What is your most crazy, utopic idea? How do you feel about it – positive or negative – or do you think that we will all die because of the global warming? _Vesna Jovanović: As Saverio Muratori put it, future will be a symbiosis between man and nature. This inbetween stage, between artificial and nature we are in now, he called territory. That is tight to what we are doing at Studio Basel. There are increasing ecological issues that we are dealing with – how we are relating to nature. _Haris Piplas: It is very rhetorical question. The tendencies in Western Europe show that floor area per person is growing. In Berlin in 1920s people had 6 or 7m2 per person, now they have 42 m2. Tendency goes toward BIGness, and then the financial crisis cuts everything down. Talking about ecology, there’s this landscape architect Charles-Waldheim, he said city should go back to nature. Housing is the most important medium for city designing, but landscape should be designed first. There’s no simple answer, it depends on many factors. _Q2: What is opinion of the profession on the future of new media technologies in designing process? Today we see a lot of programmers and artists making the process automated. Is the role of an architect more oriented to designing the process or designing the product? _Nicolas Ziesel: There are so many things to do right now and so many uncertainties about the future that I think we can concentrate on what’s happening around us, which is quite time-taking task. Everywere we live so many things rewarding things can be done. When we are in such configuration of architecture, it’s because we are concerned about a lot of things. If we’re in this for the money and social recognition, we would probably not be spending time here. We’d be spending time playing golf. But if we are here, we are feeling that there are great

possibilities around us and we have to find the tools to get inside them and interact with them. _Marko Macura: It is important in terms of large number of young architects being unemployed, perspectives within the profession in transitional countries. 90% of students from Barcelona, for example, go outside of Spain, leaving it. People here are trying to do different things, not to understand architecture as just a mere design process but also as a project process, living process, it is not just about design. _Alessandra Cianchetta: Was the previous question about parametricism – this idea that an algorithm decides instead of a designer? If it comes to parametrics, than it’s a question of taste but it’s very dangerous, especially for students. You can’t really skip decision making process expecting that some software will do it for you. But you can use technologies in a very good way. ETH Zurich robotic center is exploring potential of the technologies applied to construction. But the role of an architect in the future is not to focus just on design, but to be strategist and make decisions. _Q3: I have a question about the picture we see behind you. This area reminds me of Kaluđerica in a way. In this project, it was invested in the area and it seems like this area is being improved. But, do you think this is supporting our negative description of neglected bigness. Because it looks like if something is very problematic and we can’t solve it… all we can do is jump over it. Would it be a negative side of solving problems in Kaluđerica? _Haris Piplas: With gentrification of the area it becomes really cool to live in it, so existing communities have to go out because it gets more expensive; so there’s always negative impact on project. We ask our students not to tell us a story about floating houses, just to tell us what can go wrong with the project. And things can really go wrong. But still, this should not prevent us from trying. You try and involve more people. This is connected to what Marko said that there are no jobs in Barcelona. This is not true. Just walk through Belgrade, Sarajevo, there is work to do; talk to Mr. Trajkovic from Kaluđerica, he has projects for at least twenty of you, it’s different kind of work, but we just have to be brave enough to tackle them. _Marko Macura: That’s just what I thought when I questioned the fact that there are no jobs. Marta? _Marta Zafirovska: Question for Haris. It’s more based on the research and not on the built things. You mentioned demographic, social and cultural aspects of your research, based on many different things within society. How relevant you think is your research, because you’re not living there, you’re not able to know everything about those areas. Also, what is the general purpose of research? Is it documenting some issues and raising awareness about them? Can we be that global? Can we think about problems in Africa, where they have totally different 71


way of living that we are not able to understand, and actually expect to do something there? _Haris Piplas: Yes and no. When I went to Morocco, I was shocked to see how those people didn’t understand a problem. In order to understand a problem you need all kind of information. And you can’t find it alone. Together with other professionals we try to look for the best solutions. I know this region much better then South America. Take this methodology and adopt it to this context. It is not a guideline of how to analyze, but it is general vision, general methodology, which makes it easier to understand and produce.

refreshing. Then we went into urban scale. Suddenly it was huge, there were many stakeholders; but we like to apply small scale methodology to the big scale. Small interventions are a prospective tool of urbanism. It’s more of a strategic approach rather than statistical approach.

_Marta Zafirovska: Sometimes by doing it we are creating maybe even bigger problems. _Haris Piplas: Algeria had very sophisticated system of irrigation and it was destroyed by France. We don’t learn from our mistakes. It still happens today, if you look the real project, built two years ago by German developing agency in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, they took very generic manual of east German - 1970s functional blocks, designed by no architects and designed whole new cities in Ethiopia and this is terrible. It’s a different climate, culture of living, everything. If you try to be involved from the beginning your knowledge can have more positive impact. _Marko Macura: Top down, bottom up, sideways. We can see a lot of urban strategies. We take from the bottom up and try to produce top down. It’s interesting to discuss why ETH Zurich is doing it. _Haris Piplas: They have enough money to pay for that. And they didn’t have it a few years ago. But we were really stubborn and convinced them that this is really interesting and relevant, not only for Switzerland. These global urban issues are relevant and they should be taught at public Universities too. _Alessandra Cianchetta: That is quite new in Schools of Architecture. You don’t have so many research programs as you should have, because it is a relevant issue. _Q4: How do you approach such big scales, what is the methodology? For me it’s so hard to even imagine that scale. _Alessandra Cianchetta: We started with very small scale because that’s what you get. The good thing about it is that you can experiment with a lot of things, it’s very

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_Miljana Zeković: I teach students in the third year of studies which means that during the first two years they produce some new ideas and think about what they should do in their lives. Somehow they are very interested in the perception of understanding the space and the architecture. We have developed elective course in the third year where we are trying to understand not only temporary structures, but we are trying to do sitespecific projects and to make some installations so that we can understand the space a little bit better. Without any intention of comparing with professionals, we are also using different media in order to understand space differently. We are trying to look at the same thing from different angle, with different tools, from different perspectives, build a little bit wider angle of looking at things is precisely what we want to achieve. _Daniel Schwartz: I’m going to be provocative for a moment as a non-architect telling architects what they should do. But if you ask me what I think architects should be doing is not building. They should be investing in the process of investigation and understanding the communication and canalizing people would help them to begin the process. In general people know how to build their homes and people know how to build the space and architects perhaps should be there to facilitate the process and sometimes just get out of the way when they are not needed. _Mia David: During my studies of architecture I needed something more. When I started my master in a scene design studies, it changed my life completely. For the first time, in years of studying, I realized that there are other people, except architects who have something to say and people who think about it, because before that we were trained that architects know everything and we know how people should live. Basically, I think that we should talk and we should put our ego behind us and see what those people really need.

I also have a problem with exhibiting architecture, because you can find a lot of pretty pictures on internet which for me are not exciting at all. Architecture of exhibition should be about experience and how you can experience one space and what you want to say with that space. You should always try to convert the idea behind the architecture into that media of exhibition. _Milica Leković: I can say that many architects, especially urban designers don’t know how to read the space. They talk about processes, they talk about maybe building these containers, incomplete containers that are open for living, open for action and somehow they are always obsessed with some sort of container that will somehow capture everyday life. But many architects fail to see that everyday life has its mechanisms, has its patterns; space is constantly being produced, space is constantly being changed. We can say that architecture is a frozen music and the city is a frozen politics, but the city is so much more. Maybe Henri Lefebvre defined it really well when we said that the city is a projection of society into space, so there must be much more than only politics, more than only economics, more than only our professional activities. I firmly believe that there is a logic of production of space that lies behind Kaluđerica. There are many glitches, many things are not functining but we cannot deny the logic of occupying the territory. We can do more about it, but first we must try to understand how that space is being produced. We shouldn’t impose this process artificially. First we need to know how to recognize the process in everyday life. _Radivoje Dinulović: We need to focus on the design because it’s our profession, without any hesitation of supporting people's initiatives. If we are professionals, we have our responsibility to do our job correctly, as correctly as possible, to understand people who we are going to support and to create an environment for them. We need to make decisions in our process and we need to take responsibility for those decisions. This is the reason why we are thinking about strength in architecture, but not strength in living space, because, of course there are a lot of living spaces without architects, but we are speaking about architecture as a profession.

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_Mia David: We have to have power. It’s not about whether we know the best, but to learn what people really look for. _Marko Macura: As we’ve referred to Le Corbusier several times here, let me remind us of his quote “architecture or revolution? Revolution can be avoided”. Architecture can’t be avoided and it’s omnipresent. It is great opportunity to talk about these topics; experience and exhibition of the experience and what are the interactions between these two in a place like Cultural Centre is; where we are now imposing these topics and challenging with these issues that quite rarely happens, not just rare but with poor efficiency, I would say. As well, how much we’ve been discussing in our universities about new positions in architecture? We are speaking about how architecture has inhabited all of us but we also speak about how architecture is reachable to all of us through many new possibilities, new media… _Radivoje Dinulović: I don’t want to be angry with some politicians / policy makers, I want to have them in our professional organizations, in our schools, in our urban design studio or whatever it is. It’s not a question about whether life is stronger than architecture – of course it is. The question is how to take the responsibility, how to gain real power to do our job, to articulate the city, to articulate the built environment. _Danica Jovanovićć: We are constantly changing this building (CCB) and although we look like some kind of an institution, because we work for the city, we are also trying to open the doors for new generations and people who are willing to learn. The question is for all of us who belong to different generations, to learn constantly and to find out how to learn more and invite people from different professions.

_Daniel Schwartz: If the revolution is going to come it’s not going to be televised, it’s not going to be drawn in AutoCAD or rhino, it’s not going to be manipulated in Photoshop, it’s going to be on an excel spread sheet, it’s going to be for the ability to read a budget, some municipal reader can put forward and read those numbers and find the holes and manipulate with them, and then, you are not just decorating the city, the dreams and the bank accounts of the developer, but you are actually giving an impact. _Milica Leković: Start doing things, start doing things right now. Even the smallest thing can be significant. Start doing crazy things in space, start running through the square or occupy public space, but first learn how to use it and also recognize different initiatives, visit different parts of your city. Discover the city, try to find your position in it and in that way, only through a lots of small, maybe uncoordinated initiatives, something big can happen, a change can happen. _Snežana Timotijević (Kaluđerica) Saying people don't know how to make a house for me is a really high judgment, because I don’t know what really means to make a house. What is the ideal house? Is there a role for an architect in a place that is already built and constructed? Is there anything that architects can learn from it? _Radivoje Dinulović: There is not a question about what architects or planners could do now in Kaluđerica. Almost nothing can’t be done there. But the main question is that if somebody decides to make a house for himself there, he needs to have a contact with an architect. It’s a profession, not a hobby. There is no connection between the architects and the decision makers, that’s the real problem. The question is how to become influential, how to become part of the process of decision makers in our countries and not to be left out, because if we are left out we are just without any responsibility, which is very easy to do. It is not a matter of money or a matter of engagement, it’s a matter of communication. Go out and do something, take the responsibility!

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. …Whole panel discussion can be found online. Google it.

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Workshop Outcomes

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W.1

(Un)conscious Belgrade A City-archive of Big Ideas

W.2

Neglected bigness

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Belgrade HighLine

W.4

Agreement Arena: Creation of Social consensus

W.5

Le festin de Belgrade

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Scales(- in between)

W.7

Lost in vibration

Vesna Jovanović Iva Čukić Milica Leković Marko Macura Haris Piplas Snežana Timotijević Nina Radosavljević + Srna Tulić Ana Nikezić Dragan Marković Nataša Janković Marija Maruna

Nicolas Ziesel Daša Spasojević Dragan Marinčić Goran Govedarica Marta Zafirovska Vladimir Radinović Paul Currion

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Even as the city is a collection of public spaces, public monuments, and the ordering of our everyday working and living, it is not often enough considered on this level of juxtaposition. It was perhaps the advantage of choosing "already filled" sites for this workshop that inevitably forced this question out to the fore.

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1 Terazije Terrace. A system of small green oases make up the proposal--sometimes "hidden" between buildings and through passageways, sometimes lending themselves onto a view on slanting rooftops that reveal the city fabric occupying the slope. In connecting these spaces new systems of movement are created that could also be accompanied by content, or serve as a break in our movement through the city. Between the bus terminal, the market, and other activities in this area, movement through these blocks is frequent, and usually unpleasant, of the fastest route. The proposal tries to tackle how our everyday experience of running errands, and our spaces of encounter can obtain an extra quality.

2 Old Fairgrounds. Recognizing a site which has evolved in many directions over its turbulent history, the proposal attempts to make a reading of the existing elements and treat them--perhaps for the first time ever--as complimentary and not necessarily conflicting parts. The quality of semi-private microspaces invented by the inhabitants of the site is extended further out, while the cultural "traces" of the old fair buildings and their connecting spaces are preserved and incorporated to this system, creating an open access to history that allows the site also to be actively consumed-for living, for cultural and recreational content, in short, for the city. Interestingly enough, the site becomes an island of small, hushed-in space that connects more to the logic of Belgrade across the bank, than it does to the ordering of New Belgrade. It then opens up to the promenade along the river, again entering a large space.

3 New Fairgrounds. The fair is a machine of logistics, while many people use it, the site itself needs to be so laid out that the setting up of an event can be done quickly and efficiently. The events are not public, although a large public visits the fair. The machine when not used, remains a kind of void. Furthermore it is entirely invisible in the city, it is off center, connected to a major road and while it may lie right on the river, it has no relation to it. The student's proposed a project of transferal: of content from the fair out onto the rather wild green strip on the Sava, and a kind of second entry way to the fair from the river: what if you took your bike along the water to the fair? What if you sold honey, or organized manicures, along the water?

4 Museum of Contemporary Art. A true green treasury of the city, the park at the confluence of two rivers has already multiple uses, although a large part of it remains wild, and unoccupied. Within this latter image, lies the Museum of Contemporary Art, also currently struggling with its ongoing reconstruction--the entire site is a void in the life of the city. The student's proposed an amplification of the two major assets of the site: the museum and the park. The museum would extend into the park surface, activating it in certain points, and along already traversed paths. The recreational activities of the park would become augmented through light physical intervention, the scale of this city space would be very local and very global at the same time.

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A Repository of Latent Space What are big ideas? Are they radical? Powerful? Critical? One thing that is probably always true is that what the ideas themselves are depends on the socio-political milieu that one finds oneself in. During the twentieth century Belgrade was trying to reinvent itself, to become a metropolis and a capital. In this time a myriad of grandiose ideas were being implemented, both within the existing fabric of the city, and in the dredged former swampland across the Sava River which would become Belgrade's physical counterpart, New Belgrade. In this century, for better or for worse, the city seems more to be concerned with attracting investment, and surviving. While this can reasonably be explained and understood through the turmoil of recent events, it leaves experts of form and space practically deprived of their profession--where is the work of architects to be found today? The overall framework of these workshops inevitably forces a critical reflection upon practicing architects and architecture students as to what kind of professionals we want to become. "(Un)conscious Belgrade - City-archive of Big Ideas" was a title that intended to provoke a critical look at the city by saying at the outset that we--citizens and professionals alike--do not really grasp what Belgrade is. The workshop outlined a methodology that in a brief time format would debate the historical development of four sites, and objectively assess what was to be found there today. There was not even a rough idea on what kind of projects could emerge from this discussion. And yet, the resulting proposals ended up having a very clear common ground: Belgrade is a repository of latent spaces that could be easily activated. The radicality of the student's ideas lies in a very sober belief that one needs to do a series of simple urban incisions in order to make the city "discover" itself, and make it attractive--rather than believing that an exterior helping hand is necessary to bring appeal to the city. My comment, if anything, is to recount the four proposals and to imagine together with them what Belgrade would be like were it enriched with this catalogue of different public spaces.

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City Archive Click here

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The case study of Kaluđerica shows numerous challenges on possible ways how to interpret and respond to the problems that exist since its very foundation. In order to understand correctly the complex phenomenon of this illegal, informal, suburban, neglected, forgotten, unfinished and unplanned settlement, shaped in the absence of professionals, critique and (re)actions, workshop agenda introduced a plurality of possible methods, perspectives, disciplines and viewpoints.

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Absence of a framework for comprehension

One might say that residents of Kaluđerica were only managing to get by. On the other hand, they did not obey the existing regulations and, therefore, did not materialize their right to housing in the most rational way. After all, no one explained them really how to do it. Space-time vortex in the genesys 1 of the City of Belgrade here shows all its ruthlessness, where the residents are forgotten and left on their own. If we care about the legitimacy of the architectural and urban theory and practice, we should observe deep transformation of the Balkan cities, very evident in Kaluđerica, inclusively and implement proactive strategies (that transcend expert’s observation) in close collaboration with all actors. Discussions about the past and mistakes that someone has made in the settlement are time-consuming and life-stifling 2. During the preparatory work for Neglected Bigness workshop, an analysis of the existing documents on Kaluđerica revealed an absence of a real framework for comprehension of the settlement within the common praxis of architecture and urbanism. Let us recall here Lefebvre’s lucid remark that …the chaos lies underneath the (imposed) order that urban planners attribute to themselves 3. The reasons can probably be found in the inability of professionals to impose themselves, like they usually do, as creators of this built environment, in place of its users. Consequently, and also out of habit, they mostly resort to representing Kaluđerica as a marginal neighborhood quantitatively and statistically, with no real insight into the social processes in the community. The only result of such unilateral approach is simplification of reality and stigmatization of the settlement through categories and labels. Social consequences of this act are dramatic.

The coming into being of something; the origin Over the course of almost 40 years, urban development plans for the area have undergone only partial modifications at best. 3 Lefebvre, Henri. The urban revolution. U of Minnesota Press, 2003, p.157. 1

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Plurality of approaches Therefore, through work in the Neglected bigness workshop, we have tried to leave behind all times favorite and pretentious universal principles of urban planning that exclude reality, and to found our own approach on learning, research and knowledge transfer, which would result in new paradigms in accordance with necessities of life, as such. To minimise the probability of the Balkans-favorite quick-fix adhocism, our research included multi-layered perspectives and different backgrounds and global-local experiences; different possible methodologies and research were introduced (Bauhaus, Urban-Think Tank, ETSAM, CA and other) making a cacophony of possibilities for the researchers / participants. On the other hand, it was sought to help participants to open, define and generate relevant argumentation on a number of new insights through active research. Intention to effectively contribute to comprehension of Kaluđerica’s neglected bigness was as equally important as the affirmation of participants’ research contributions. There were neither joint assumptions nor unique answers. The process was characterized by the continuous setting and evaluation of hypotheses, as well as of workshop tutors’ incessant crossing of discourses, experiences and expertise; most importantly, all of this was strengthened by inexhaustible and innovative students’ contributions. This plurality of approaches inevitably leads to elusive boundaries between different fields of research and it does not insure immediate and palpable results. That was never our goal. We wanted to highlight the phenomenon of Kaluđerica from as many aspects as possible - polysemously and to emancipate problems and indicate their importance through polemical exchange.

Qualitative methods It is noteworthy that our group’s structure was a true indicator of the lack of knowledge that forms the general image of Kaluđerica: the majority of students (and mentors) from Belgrade have never visited the settlement before. Also, inaccurate information about the settlement was a major obstacle. In order to avoid the fabrication of solutions by observing Kaluđerica exclusively as a phenomenon, through numbers and from a distance, the only task we had set up in advance was to demystify existing stereotypes through interpretation of the settlement’s context, everyday life and experiences of local residents and set the framework for further action, one step at a time. We have developed an entire linguistic category, a jargon, which discriminates the immediate, the visual. The hardest thing to do – narrating a story - is considered a laughing matter or literary sophism. We firmly cling to concepts, because we do not want to set out to sea. We have perceived Columbus more as an adventure film hero, while he was actually an epistemological hero 4. The invaluable importance of an unempirical approach that Schlögel corroborates through unique critical reading of landscapes, cities and maps, affirming intuition as an irreplaceable tool for the study of historiography, inspired us to apply this logic on our case study and to test how far one can come by trusting one's own senses and systematically sharpening them 5. In his book Im Raum lesen wir die Zeit: Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik (Reading time through space. On the History of Civilisation and Geo-Politics), German historian Karl Schlögel, praises the curiosity of Walter Benjamin’s flaneur, who walks through the city, simultaneously reconstructing its history and advocates the Kantian thesis that concepts without intuitions are empty and vice versa. Schlögel, Karl. Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit. München: Hanser, 2003. 5 Ibid. 4

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The process The first step was to introduce students to possible ways of analyzing Kaluđerica: general topics such as informal settlements of the global South, the origin and evolution of American suburbia, complex interaction between public and private domains, as well as specific research on spatial events that strengthen the identity of Kaluđerica were exposed. However, a visit to the settlement was crucial because the way to get at what goes on in the seemingly mysterious and perverse behavior of cities is… to look closely, and with as little previous expectation as is possible, at the most ordinary scenes and events, and attempt to see what they mean and whether any threads of principle emerge among them. 6 In addition to the analysis of the physical structure of the settlement and participatory observation of everyday life in it, the students conducted a socio-anthropological research. Through interviews, they have discovered residents´ opinion on positive aspects and problems in the area, as well as ideas and possible solutions. These experiences have revealed us the importance of reviewing and revising the concepts that architectural and urban practice often normalizes and assumes without questioning. The attempt to anticipate the results of the workshop and to pre-define its structure has proven inadequate. Students were the main protagonists of the workshop, equally responsible for the selection of research topics and definition of work procedure and formats. Although the initial aim of the workshop was specific participatory intervention in the settlement, we realized that the rich dialogue and posing a series of questions made better starting point for future work. Don't act, just step back and think (first), Slavoj Žižek would say. 7

Results A theoretical approach that included both intuition and empirical methods has contributed to an objective research and has set participants free from solipsisms of working with such a large community as Kaluđerica. At the same time, this approach, perhaps, emancipates the new role of architects-planners, who must rethink their position and actions in constantly changing contexts of modern society. The most valuable result of the workshop is a detailed understanding and intelligent critical positioning of a complex and often contradictory reality. As an outcome, a collaborative map summarizes our impressions of the settlement, conversations with the locals, our thoughts, doubts, interpretations of diverse issues, as well as suggestions and, hopefully, establishes the desired framework for comprehension. The map establishes a relationship between discourses, narratives and practices that continuously shape Kaluđerica and provides an opportunity to rediscover the settlement and apprehend it humanely. From this map one should perceive our concluding view that physical production of space is only one of the components of urban transformations, which are vitally complex and too important a task to be exclusively in the hands of architects and urban planners. We will continue.

6 7

Jacobs, Jane. The death and life of American cities. 1961. Žižek, Slavoj. First as tragedy, then as farce. Verso, 2009, p.11. 105


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Neglected Bigness Click here

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Motive

. Pulling out parts of the railroad for the upcoming BIG project “Beograd na vodi� . Challenging the almost abandoned railroad (border/limit) to become a resource for the next BIG project . Learning, at the same time, to see and feel the place

Background

Always perceived as a BORDER zone, a division between city/river, up/down, wealthy/poor, white/grey, dynamic/mute, as an unbreakable flow, an indeterminate space with a strong personality and NO name . Instead of pulling it out, we would like to investigate on the possibility of the railroad to become a filed, a bridge, to gather and connect, to smooth and even propels mentioned differences, to show its diversity, or better say versatility of Belgrade lifestyles

Approach

. The main idea is to deconstruct the railroad meaning sensing its nature and reconstruct it as to carry peoples and places identity along its route in place and time . The goal is to denote differences and keep those particularities in future transgressions of the place . The main task was to experience the spirit of the place, to locate particular feelings of being involved with the place and to try to act upon it through body movement

Process

. Walking along the railroad (notice) . Catching a particular feeling of the place (denote) . Articulating a feeling through body movement (act) . Building up a vision of architecture (re-act)

Outcome

. Creating the new sense of the place build up on the ashes of the old one . Making the invisible path visible . Accenting the connection between people and railroad

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Belgrade Highline Click here

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Old Fairground &

BEKO Factory Case(s) chosen

Agreement Arena: Click here

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W4 Discussion

_Marija Maruna: We have two independent experts with us today: Goran Milićević, professor of economy, who can maybe tell us something from the perspective of the logic of economy in those situations. On the other hand, we have one of the participants in this project – Dubravka Sekulić, from Ko gradi grad, she was one of the actors in the case of BEKO Factory.

_Dubravka Sekulić: Although I don´t really agree with the decision [*the students decided that Zaha Hadid´s Beko Masterplan should be built] because there were some oversights to what this project means, I think it’s really important that this group of students came here and said whether they’re supporting something or not. Taking responsibility for our profession and for outcomes of our decisions is something we really lack in our field of expertise. There is a full bag of excuses we often carry around in order to avoid taking responsibility for being the devil’s advocates. You can really see that in the statement of Vuk Đurović who said (in an article in “Politika”): “if the Government wanted there to be a park, they had 50 years to make it. Who am I to protect it if they won’t do it”? So, OK, somebody else is responsible. Our profession is often reduced to just estheticizing what is already decided in the field of real-estate speculations and we still think that is a point in which we’re creative. The education is actually based upon this myth. That´s why I think that these types of workshops are really important. They help understanding the process through revealing that our expertise – professions that deal with distribution of space, especially when the space is as tight up with financial speculation as it is at the moment in the cities we live in – cannot only be focused on aestheticization. When we talk about Beko, the least productive thing is discussion on esthetics, on whether we like it or not. This is the least relevant field of discussion. All the points that make this project so problematic existed far before Zaha Hadid came and aestheticized already predetermined form by speculation. And that is why it is important to bring the level of scrutiny towards some of these architects who are considered to be the best. In my work I try to really criticize this marriage between real-estate speculations and the important architects who put the strength of their position into protecting the capital and not those who are going to live around. Ultimately, Beko and the majority of other similar projects are all the same when it comes to content. It’s all about some shopping; it’s all about some desire of luxury; it’s all about some tourism. But, what does it really mean? What kinds of jobs are there left for the citizens of Belgrade? Only the most menial service jobs – this type of jobs is what these projects bring to the cities they are offered to. Our profession is already affected by it; it´s reduced mostly to drawing what somebody has already built, in the process of legalization. In order to have more satisfying jobs when we become architects and professionals dealing with space, we need to start producing this position. _Marija Maruna: Professor, could you please explain us, in this situation, when Serbia and the city of Belgrade do not have enough money for big projects like this one, which is in control of investors, what we can do and what could be our role in these processes? _Goran Milićević: First, it was an excellent presentation and you made a clear point here: namely, we don’t have a complete procedure where all the rules are set, so that we can merely follow it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have this problem – we would know from the beginning whether the Beko project would be realized or not. It’s unpardonable that we have this situation when you have a finished project, some money invested in, and you still don´t know whether it´ll be realized, not because of real estate market (whether it would be profitable to build it or not) but simply because there is some bureaucracy preventing it from happening. But a good point is that, precisely from this case, you can learn what you need to know about architecture and real life. When you´re studying architecture you are thinking about shapes, buildings, spaces, etc. but you don´t question whether there´s anybody who would want to build what you´re projecting. Right now, the question is whether the investor should build it or not, whether the real estate market is good for this kind of project or not. And it is not a good moment now. It´s even worse when it comes to Belgrade on Water project. Sava Amphitheatre is a potential crown jewel of Belgrade, which should go to its waterfront but not in the way as it is proposed now, as a decision of one person who says: “I have $3 billion. What do you have?” There´s no discussion about the elements of this project. It´s a real estate gamble for allegedly $3 117


billion; it could cost much more and right now, prospects of having this gamble ending in a real profit are really not good. The possible outcome is that the city of Belgrade and State of Serbia will have to repay all the debts. Only the works on the removal of railway infrastructure and bus station are already estimated to cost half a billion. They´re speaking about some foreign demand for this 2 000 000 m2, which is highly questionable. And, at what price? Eventually, we may have to repay this $3 billion deficit in the budget of the city of Belgrade. This is a gamble which should be prevented. If we had a procedure, we would first know what would be the urbanistic vision of Belgrade descending on its waterfronts. From then on, there should be some kind of competition (that´s where the architects step in) and people of Belgrade should have their saying. When you have this vision, then you have a clearly defined sequence of events. For instance, in London Docklands area, London Docklands Corporation was first set up, and they were all the time defining rules through negotiation with the British Government and the local residents. Regarding design, Zaha´s project is OK, but, regarding profitability, it´s clearly not a good time for it. Real estate prices are falling constantly for several past years and they´ll continue falling. Why? One thing the architects overlook and should be looking into (although this data is not even published) is city´s GDP. Belgrade´s GDP was €8 billion and now it´s €4 billion and falling. We´re not in a position to afford this project and this is particularly bad time to start any big projects at all. BEKO is a relatively small project. It is questionable whether it would function as a residential or office space, but as a hotel it may function. But Belgrade on Water is extremely big. To cut a long story short, Zaha Hadid´s architecture is not for us to judge but for a real estate market it´s not a good moment and if we don´t set the rules on how to decide in each of these steps, we´ll have similar problems, postponed and on a much larger scale. That´s where architects come in – you have to get involved in civic life and to let your voice be heard. I first learned about Belgrade on Water on some B92 blog and young architects were throwing stones on it from the beginning – “that´s North Korean architecture etc.”, and they contributed in forming a public opinion, which is against this project but there are no mechanisms to make the critique open, let alone to influence the outcome. _Marija Maruna: What should we do when a big investor with money comes? How should we react as professionals? _Goran Milićević: We should have clear rules, understandable to everyone. But we have a planning system which doesn´t say anything about economic conditions, which should be very relevant for the realization of any plan. If a big investor comes, we should know what is realistic for the city to gain from this project. _Dubravka Sekulić: I think the issue is how we determine public interest. Everything is so contingent with the re-election circle and public interest is actually considered to be only what enables those in power to remain in power. Without an involvement of much broader actors from civil, public and private sectors, we cannot really determine what public interest is. This is the crisis of representative democracy; present not only here but also everywhere, because the idea of democratic representation is that those re-elected have a mandate to determine what public interest is. This is not happening and needs to be rethought. Another thing, visible especially in private-public partnership projects, is that public entity (a city or municipality) gives some kind of guarantee that if private developers do not obtain predicted amount of profit, they will be compensated. The city of Berlin, because of its corrupted mayor, is one of the most indebted economies in Europe. For every single crazy speculation project they said: “Oh, we will guarantee” and now they´re totally indebted because many of these developers, of course, did not make any money but they managed not only to recover the investment but also to make big profits and get away with it. And citizens are left with paying this through their tax money. Scrutinizing whether the public interest really exists or what we are getting for our tax money is very important. This is where the crucial transparency is lacking. This problem doesn´t exist only in Serbia but in much more organized societies _Marija Maruna: Who should say what our public interest is? _Goran Milićević: All of us. Architects are taught to find this point of common public interest, where all the stakeholders would agree. But this is far from the reality. We react only when a large chunk of people is not satisfied with the outcome. Nobody was grudging about the New Belgrade, which is a lost opportunity. We were all proud to make it in a Corbusian way but it turned out to be a flop... _Dubravka Sekulić: I don’t agree that New Belgrade is or was a flop.. 118


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Le festin de Belgrade Click here

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Scales (- in between) Belgrade, the city at the delta of two rivers never really came down to the riverbanks – not even during its modern history and significant progress it supposed. Bringing rivers into Belgrade’s urban matrix hasn’t seriously been considered, either in theory or in evident practice. The river bank on New Belgrade side has a full length of around 18km, which could/should be treated carefully, regarding its scale and its importancy as a part of the cityscape in total. This space, placed BETWEEN the old and the new town could, eventually, contribute to the final solution in connecting the two parts. The New Belgrade river bank is a BIG project. But the first step is to explore and understand the relations of the structures, typologies, their scales. Respectively, the subject of the workshop was defined as SCALES - In Between; between the old and the new part of the city, between the port and the beach, between the grass and the industry, between the boardwalk and the traffic loop, between the need and the desire, between the past and an undefined future. The short introduction movie, reflecting one aspect of „Belgrade on Water” phenomenon, became the starting point for the workshop. Extracted from different sources, narratives portrayed the continuous change, especially treating the importance of its socio-political background. The movie was an invitation for participants to feel the potential of the area and rethink the potentials of its present and future needs. It was elaborated during the walk on the site through a series of documenting, conversation and understanding. The first step for participants was to read, research, analyse and define frame for their own interpretation which is based on: impression, experience, expression… Further, inspired by the intro-movie, the process led to creation of the collage made of documents, archive photos, new photos or entirely personal associations. The moderation of the collage-making was aimed at bringing the new perception of the space, freed from patterns and typologies, without or before any conceptualization of the problem and ideas. The accent was at the correct understanding of the phenomena itself. Only mere hint of possible actions was given. The final presentation was the creative act of posing the questions and pointing out the need for raising the awareness about this area. BGLS-BIG PROJECTS challenges the meaning of big projects today. Somehow, we all live here in the era of big projects that are being developed without real consciousness about the consequences they may have. Every contemporary city is a big project per se but also, every city is continuously being changed by launching new big projects. It seems that fascination for big projects will never end. There are a few questions that need to be answered: The need for BIGP, their relevance and sustainability The positive and negative implications of BIGP Need to put BIGP into much wider time-space context Do we, as a society, have a strategic framework for BIGP? What are the mechanisms and procedures in developed societies for making decisions about BIGP? Does Belgrade need BIGP, where, when and how? BGLS, nevertheless, affirms big projects in a broader sense; seeing and thinking about a very big project for humanizing a city, whether by providing its citizens with minimum of urbanity or by respecting their right to have (healthy) food and new tendencies.

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Scales(- in between)

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W.7

Lost in vibration Tamara Miletic Milica Milojevic Predrag Milovanovic Aleksandra Gavric Aleksandar Pavlović Andjelka Markovic Ivan Krnjajić Taras Subotic Anja Milojević + Paul Currion Vladimir Radinović

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Our culture is increasingly dominated by the visual. With every telephone now a camera, everybody is taking and sharing photos and videos all the time. This focus on the visual is not completely novel – in the past, people would take photographs for themselves, or send postcards to other people – but what is new is the ease and speed with which images can circulate. As architects, we are used to the image as the primary way of understanding the city – through images, maps, masterplans – and individual buildings – though plans, sections, elevations. Our goal was to explore the city through sound and not through vision. We wanted to explore an aspect of the city which people usually overlook, to feel the city in a different and unusual way; and for this reason, we used psycho-geography as our approach. Psychogeography is a term coined by Guy Debord (one of the founders of the Situationist movement), who defined it as: “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviours of individuals.” In practice, psychogeography is more fun than this definition suggests – albeit serious fun – and includes various activities to make us more attentive to our senses and emotions as they relate to place. One techniques used is the dérive, “a mode of experimental behavior linked to the condition of urban society: a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances.” Again, in practice this is more fun than it sounds: drifting through a particular place without a specific aim, guided by the way in which different spaces repelling you or drawing you in. The workshop split into two teams and walked several routes through the city. Equipped with sound recorders, we recorded every interesting sound we heard. We let the sound guide us, taking different directions depending on our engagement with the soundscape, allowing us to ignore the visual aspect of the city. Once we returned to the workshop venue, we reviewed the sounds that we had recorded, and built them into a soundmap that shows the highlights of our walks. This soundmap will be made available online, and also be mixed into a long-form field recording. The whole experience of this workshop (or “walkshop”) was important because we documented sound in itself and for itself, and not for any other purpose. The soundmap is unique because it relates to a specific time and place; and, most importantly, to the experiences of specific people. If you make your own soundmap, it will be completely different. Through a photograph, or a picture, or a painting, we see a moment frozen in time – but sound gives it life. Videos can have a similar effect, but we often focus too much on the images and do not pay enough attention to the sounds. The question is: why should we pay attention to sound? Precisely because it reveals the liveliness of specific places in the city. Every soundscape has many different layers, natural and manmade, and each layer tells a different story, tells us more about that time and place. This leaves us with another question: we documented the city as it sounds now, but can we imagine how it sounded 50 or 100 years ago? More importantly, how will it sound 100 years from now? Sound is a vital tool for understanding how the city is used, and to help us to constructively shape 133


terazije -ptice.mp3

terazije - jad i zlo.mp3

terazije -muzicar.mp3

terazije -konobar.mp3

terazije - taĹĄ.mp3 terazije - sliÄ?ice.mp3

terazije - jad i zlo terazije 2.mp3 beogradjanka deca.

savamala - niko nije palilula - oluci.mp3 iz beograda.mp3

palilula - klima uredjaji.mp3

dunav - dunav.mp3 dorcol - pop.mp3 dorcol - pijaca.mp3

savamala Ĺželeznica.mp3

savamala - Saborna crkva.mp3

palilula - dva psa.mp3

dunav - frula.mp3

dorcol busenje.mp3

dorcol - baba.mp3

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Lost in Vibration

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VI

Participants Questionnaire

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VII

People Involved

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Alessandra Cianchetta Conference Lecturer & Workshops Guest critic Alessandra Cianchetta is a leading architect and founding partner of AWP, Paris, the award-winning practice that works across scales and genres - from the 160 ha strategic masterplan for the Paris CBD to pavilions, landscapes, interiors, exhibitions and publications. Currently visiting critic and adjunct professor at Cornell University, Columbia University and The Berlage, Alessandra gives equal weight to the substance of building and its intangible effects, addressing sensual and perceptual experiences at large urban scales. Current works include a 85,000 square-metre housing and mixed-use sector project in Lausanne, which will transform the landscape of the city, a 70,000 square-metre public space adjoining the Grande Arche de la Défense, including a unique series of new buildings, the masterplan of Paris’ CBD, and Poissy Galore, a sequence of public buildings and follies set in a park by the Seine.

Vesna Jovanović Conference Lecturer / (Un)conscious Belgrade - A City-archive of Big Ideas Workshop Tutor A practicing architect involved in territorial urban research and teaching at ETH Studio Basel since 2011. She obtained her Master's degree from the University of Belgrade, and a Postgraduate degree from the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. She has worked as an architect in Rotterdam on several projects including a MATRA capacity-building government collaboration between Holland and Turkey in Diyarbakir, on the topic of restructuring the development of the city, governmental housing, and the preservation of the historical city core. Subsequently, she has worked in Brussels for the office of 51N4E, on large scale urban studies for Istanbul (a collaboration between the municipality of Istanbul and the Rotterdam Biennale 'IABR 2012: Making City'), an expansion project on the right bank of the Garonne in Bordeaux (competition), and on a restructuring project for the Brussels Metropolitan Region. She has guest lectured at the UdK, Berlin, MARCH, Moscow, and the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Rotterdam, in 2011.

Marija Maruna Conference Lecturer / Agreement Arena Workshop Tutor Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture University of Belgrade, Department for Urbanism. She has 20 years experience of teaching in the field of urban planning and urban design. She is conducting the courses Urban Structure, Urban History and Theory, Integrated Urban Planning, Urban Research Methodology. She is the Head of Master program Integrated Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture. She participated in several scientific research projects of the Ministry of Science of Serbia and in development of several urban development plans, strategic plans, urban studies and urban projects. She was a mentor in many international and national student workshops. She is engaged in specialists and doctoral studies at the Faculty of Architecture as a mentor and co-mentor of many specialists’ works and doctoral dissertations. She has won several awards at the national urban-architectural competitions and exhibitions of professional achievements in urban planning. For her doctoral dissertation entitled "Application of Unified Process Methodologies in Urban Planning" she has received the annual award of the Belgrade Chamber of Commerce. For her publication "Urbanism of Belgrade: Guide for Research the Process of Space Production" she has won Second prize at the XXII International urban planning exhibition. She is the co-author of the book "Strategic Urban Design and Cultural Diversity" (with Nada Lazarevic Bajec), and author of many published papers in scientific publications as well as national and international conferences. She is the redactor and editor of several national professional publications in the field of urban planning.

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Ana Nikezić Conference Lecturer / High Line Workshop Tutor After finishing her studies at the University of Belgrade - Faculty of Architecture, obtained her MA (2001) and her Ph.D. (2006) with the "Transforming the concept of an urban house under the conditions of regenerating the city center" thesis at the University of Belgrade - Faculty of Architecture. She covers the following subjects: Master design studio, Workshop on the 1st year of Master studies, the Seminars on the 2nd year of Master studies, as well as elective courses at the undergraduate, master and doctoral studies. As a part of the design studio she examines the effects and the limits of the abilities of architecture in the complex context of postmodern urban landscape. Through these electives she promotes contemporary everyday life and city lifestyle, as well as various architectural strategies of regenerating the city center. She is an active member of the team of researchers engaged in scientific research projects funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia. Her professional and scientific papers were published in national and international professional corpus at the conferences, monographs and journals. She serves as a mentor for many architectural workshops, most important of which are "Architecture and nature" / Summer School of Architecture in Petnica (2012), "A Garden To Go" / Belgrade ECOWEEK-a (2012), "Child Friendly City" / Belgrade Festival of Flowers (2013) and "St. Petersburg"a part of the field trip - Faculty of Architecture (2013).

Nicolas Ziesel Conference Lecturer / Le festin de Belgrade Workshop Tutor Lives and works in Paris, France. Co-founded KOZ architectes in 1999 with Christophe Ouhayoun, and have since been building pop and committed building like the Saint Cloud Sports and Leisure center, and the « Tête en l’air » wooden frame housing project in Paris - One of the 2014 « Building of the year » ARCHDAILY awards. In 2001 he was co-founder of the collective office PLAN01 and the environmental engineering office PLAN02, who have been doing a variety of projects from organizing competitions to building specific programs such as the Thiepval Memorial visitor center or the Rennes Crematorium. In 2007 he co-founded the collective FRENCHTOUCH dedicated to promote internationally the specificity of today’s french architecture. FRENCHTOUCH edits the « optimistic architectural yearbook » and was co-curator of the french pavilion at the 2008 Venice architectural Biennal. Since 2012 he is teacher at the architecture schools of Paris-Belleville and Lille, and has also been doing workshops with elementary school children near Paris and architecture students in Mumbai.

Radivoje Dinulović Architecture of Performance and (or) Performance of Architecture Panel Discussion moderator Professor of Architectural Design, Scene Design and Ephemeral Architecture at the Faculty of Technical Sciences; Chair in Art Applied to Architecture, Technique & Design. Founder of BA, MA and PhD Studies in Scene Design, Architecture & Technology at the University of Novi Sad. Curator of the national exhibition of Serbia at the PQ 2007 and National Commissioner at the PQ 2011.

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Milica Leković Neglected Bigness Workshop Tutor / Panel Moderator Co-founder of Center of Architecture (CA), as well as a moderator and guest lecturer at EScapes and FRearCH educational platforms. Architect (University of Novi Sad, 2009). From 2008-2010 she worked on the project of Social Inclusion and Housing Improvement in Roma Settlements in Vojvodina, Serbia as a member of the Roma Resource Centre, EHO team. In 2010 she was granted a scolarship for specialist studies at Institute of Cooperation for Basic Habitability (ICHaB) at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM). Since 2011, her activities focus on urban and territorial research. While studying for a master degree in Urban Studies at the School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM, UPM), she was affiliated to Social Housing, Basic Habitability and Urban Heritage investigation group as a researcher on the Atlas of Social Housing in Madrid, 1939-2010 project and the revision of 1997's Master Plan of the City of Madrid. Currently, she is a PhD student at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (ETSAM, UPM), shifting her interests towar ds the field of urban complexity.

Iva Čukić Panel Moderator / (Un)conscious Belgrade -A City-archive of Big Ideas Workshop Tutor (1983) from Belgrade. Graduated in 2008. from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade. Same year, she attended the phd studies. Field of her research includes melting points of public space, public arts and spatio-cultural discourse. She has participated and initiated several workshops, exhibitions and projects in this manner. She is a member of both Ministarstvo Prostora collective and Mikro Art, from Belgrade.

Nataša Janković High Line Workshop Tutor Nataša was born in 1985 in Krusevac, Serbia. She became a Master of Architecture in 2009th year. Scholar of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia since 2010th to 2013th, from 2013th works as a research assistant and teaching associate at the University of Belgrade - Faculty of Architecture, where she is currently attending her PhD studies. She served as a mentor in a few workshops: 2013: "City Measured for the Children", Belgrade (organized by: Belgrade Flower Festival and SWECO Architects AB, Stockholm); 2013: RIBA “Polyport international workshop” (Belgrade University ofArchitecture and Urbanism ‘Ion Mincu’ Bucharest, Romania, University of Belgrade - Faculty of Architecture and University of Brighton, Architecture Programme, Brighton, UK); 2012: “Waterliving Kids” (organized by: Megatrend University, Politecnico di Milano, City of Belgrade). She also actively participates in presentation of student works through exhibitions and festivals (Eme3_2012, International Architecture Festival, Barcelona; EduZone, Mikser Festival, Belgrade; etc), but also she was a part of organization committee for two important scientific international conferences both held in Belgrade: Architecture of Deconstruction/The Specter of Jacques Derrida (2012) and ISSUES? Concerning the Project of Peter Eisenman/Discussions with Peter Eisenman (2013) with its distinguish guests (like Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, Mark Wigley and others).

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Daniel Schwartz TORRE DAVID documentary co-author and presenter / panel discussion Daniel Schwartz is a filmmaker, photographer, and urban researcher. He studied Urban Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Radio Journalism at the University of Botswana. His photography and writing have appeared in numerous publications such as the New York Times, The Guardian, and Domus. He has directed documentary short films that have screened at the Venice Biennale, the World Urban Forum, and the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam, and been broadcasted on numerous channels in Europe and the U.S. He currently serves as associated director of Urban-Think Tank Films and manages multimedia research at the Brillembourg & Klumpner Chair for Architecture and Urban Design at ETH Zürich.

Haris Piplas Conference Lecturer / Neglected Bigness Workshop Tutor Haris Piplas graduated from the University in Sarajevo in 2008 in Landscape Architecture. He was granted the German DAAD-scholarship for postgraduate studies, receiving a MSc. in Urban Design Master studies at the Technical University of Berlin following an academic stay at the Politecnico di Milano. He has worked as an Editor for the Journal of the “European Federation for Landscape Architecture”, and on the Steering Committee at the UN SCBD Network “MediverCities”. He has published several articles in magazines and contributed to various publications incl. “Forest and the city”, TOPOS Magazine, and JoLA Magazines. He has been guest speaker and jury critic at several institutions including Harvard, Prince of Wales Foundation for Built Environment, MIT, TU Wien, UN ECE, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau as well as professional events including AESOP (Association of European Schools for Planning), ECLAS (European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools) annual congresses. Since 2011 he is affiliated with ETH Zurich D-ARCH Urban-ThinkTank Brillembourg&Klumpner Chair for Architecture and Urban Design where he figures as a Doctoral Candidate and coordinator of the “Urban Design I/II: Urban Stories” Lecture Series.

Dragan Marković High Line Workshop Tutor Dragan Markovic (1987) is a third year student of doctoral studies at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade. Since 2009 he was engaged as a teaching assistant at the Department of Architecture within the introductory courses, elective courses within the BA studies and architectural engineering and design studio within the MA studies of architecture. Since 2012 year he is receiving a scholarship from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia and is a member of the team of researchers engaged in scientific research projects funded by the Ministry. His student and award-winning competition entries were exhibited at Belgrade Salon of Architecture, as well as numerous group exhibitions. He was a mentor to several architectural workshops, most important of which were: "Architectural Student Congress" in Novi Sad (2012), "Architecture and Nature" at the Summer School of Architecture in Petnica (2012) and "A Garden to Go" at the Belgrade ECOWEEK-a (2012). He is one of the four members of the editorial team of the architecture portal "Super Space" (www.superprostor.com).

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Nina Radosavljević Neglected Bigness Workshop Tutor She graduated from the 2009th Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade. She had a chance to work with one of the best young European architecture offices in Austria and Italy, where learned to work with parametric design in an urban design projects. Her particular interest in the field of art and exhibitions is perhaps most clearly depicted by the most valid architectural prize in Serbia "Ranko Radović" in 2010, which she was awarded with professor Danko Selinkić and a group of colleges for the multimedia project “Architectural Exhibition”. She was a part of Bauhaus Kolleg XIII "After Levittown" Program, where she gained specialization in the field of Suburbs. Exhibition " After Levittown " was held in July- August 2012, the Bauhaus Building in Dessau. Also, she had a privilege to have a research project at the Summer International school at ETH University Zurich in a Programme "From Suburb to City"; where she has collaborated with the greatest experts in the world scene of architecture and urbanism. In cooperation with the Ministarstvo Prostora in Belgrade, she led the workshop "Belgrade 's Dream" in December 2012. As a result of her work in in Serbia , Canada , France, Austria, Italy and Germany, she has explored and interacted with different cultures and customs in field of architecture Snežana Timotijević Neglected Bigness Workshop Tutor She defines her home as a transitional foggy-like structure in between Kaluđerica and the centre of Belgrade. In 2009 she graduated with a BA studies in Art Production Management from Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade; In 2012 she graduated from the University of Arts, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management; MA Thesis on Public event as a generator of social value changes, Case study: Kaluđerica. In the period of 2012–2013 she was working as a teaching demonstrator for the course Media Relations at Academy of Fine Arts, and courses Contemporary Media and Presentation and Placement of Artworks at the New Academy of Arts. From 2010 she was participating in various projects in Belgrade such as: Construction Site Theatre, Maastricht Summer School: Culture and the City, Failed Architecture: Belgrade’s Savamala, Scenic sites of Savamala and Creative Engagement: Using city as an action tool. From different angles these experiences triggered her aspirations for complex relations between urban and socio-cultural aspects of the city, public space, community-art, site-specific projects and related. In 2012 she initiated a project Blejakt: Kaluđerica - photo workshop and exhibition for the local youth. She is involved with informal group Radio.nica dealing with small-scale events, instalations and workshops based on creative use of light. As of October 2013 she works as program assistant in Cultural Center of Belgrade exploring her interests and gaining new skills by engaging in the wide spectrum of cultural programs. Belgrade.Scapes:Lab brings her back to the local activism.

Daša Spasojević Le festin de Belgrade Workshop Tutor Graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade. Currently active on a research project dealing with translation of the complex data sets into a physical Model for Savamala; as coordinator of the organization team ofSummer School of Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture; as team member and coordinator on several projects within the School of Urban Practices, operating in Belgrade; as coordinator on the project of alternative ways of farming in cities. Interested in the sciences of the city, and the meaning and forms of public space. She has participated in projectssuch as City Acupuncture, seminars at Petnica Research Center, as a participant, mentor, organizer of many workshops and conferences dealing with the city and architecture. In her spare time, she enjoys the most inventing and writing the stories and illustrating them. At the BG Scapes Lab, Daša is in the role of Workshop guru.

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Vladimir Radinović Lost in Vibration Workshop Tutor Vladimir Radinović (Belgrade / 1984.) He studied New Visual Media at the University of Novi Sad and is currently holding an MA from the Digital Culture department at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. He is a program director of independent community radio called NOFM.rs and a collaborator within the Scapes Lab. He has worked as a music producer and sound artist for more then 10 years and his work has been showcased on many exhibitions and festivals around the world. He is in love with psychogeography and digital cartography.

Dragan Marinčić Panel Moderator / SCALES Workshop Tutor A practicing architect, founder and leading architect at “M+”, studio for architecture, since 2004. He obtained his master degree from the University of Belgrade, and subsequently has worked as Teaching assistant both at the University of Belgrade and the University of Novi Sad. Devoted to the research approach, with his team, he participated in more than 30 competitions (many of which were awarded). Always curious to understand the phenomena of the city, he elaborated the theme of the river bank even in his degree thesis project, for which he was honored by “Sister Bulaic foundation” in 2003. Other honors: 1997_ Association of Novi Sad Architects Salon of Architecture Award for student project; 2000_ Belgrade Salon of Architecture Award for competition project (architectural competition for Square - Gallery in Belgrade) 2008_ “RankoRadovic” Award for the best realized building of the year in Serbia, for “LEVY 9” office building.

Marta Zafirovska SCALES Workshop Tutor Marta Zafirovska (1986), graduated at the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje and currently is a practicing architect and cofounder of the studio for architecture ‘FORMIKA PLUS’ in Skopje. Apart from her professional work she deals with different kinds of platforms, activism, initiatives which involve architecture on a different levels. She is a coordinator for Macedonia and a moderator of the educational platforms for students of architecture (FLATscapes in The Netherlands, EScapes in Spain, FRearCH in France and Switzerland) in organization of IDnet Serbia. The platform includes data collection and documenting of architecture, research, conferences, workshop within the visited countries. She is part of the First Archi Brigade, informal group of young architects who are taking a proactive role in the formation of the today’s architectural reality in Skopje by organization of exhibitions, panel discussions, debates and publishing activities. She has also been working in the origination of Skopje Architecture Week /2012, 2011/ and Open House Dublin /2013/.

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Paul Currion Lost in Vibration Workshop Tutor Paul Currion is a consultant working with humanitarian organisations, with an interest in urban disaster response and resilience. He has an MSc in Architecture, specialising in Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies, and is a member of the Belgrade group Ko Gradi Grad.

Goran Govedarica SCALES Workshop Tutor Architect operating in: Paris / Zurich / Novi Sad / BeÄ?ej / Lviv / Belgrade + 2014 - Qatar

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Marko Macura

SCAPES:LAB co-initiator / Program Editor / Neglected Bigness Workshop Tutor From 2007 he is active as a practicing architect. He has founded Center of architecture (CA) in 2008 together with Milica Leković and Milica Stojšić as an initiative for a broader investigation of resources and methodology in education and research process. He coordinated strategy implementation as a program editor of several educational platforms aimed at architecture students from Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. (FLATscapes 01, 02 and 03 / 2009-2011 in The Netherlands, EScapes / 2012 in Spain, FRearCH / 2013 in France and Switzerland). These programs have preceded and shaped the SCAPES:LAB initiative with the aim to synchronize capacities strength built through intense production in separate programs. He directs SCAPES:LAB focuses, actions and activities conducting collaborative platforms which furthers critical thinking among young professionals from transitional realities in the Balkan region. He has been moderator, guest lecturer workshop initiator, tutor and producer at many panels, site explorations, conferences, exhibitions and workshops (ETSAM, ETSAB, COAVN, COAC, IaaC, Pavilion de L'Arsenale, Campo de Cebada, ETH Zurich, ETH Studio Basel, TU Graz ...) He is also an independent researcher interested in social sculpture and critical theory.

Miloš Drašković SCAPES:LAB co-initiator / Event coordinator Co-founder of NGO „EM“ which after 5 years of its existing grew into regional initiative NGO „IDnet“. Developed / coordinated interdisciplinary platforms „IDnet“ which aims to bridge the gap between high education and label market and to enable participants to acquire a broader understanding of EU possibilities. His activities are aimed at providing an insight into different spheres of research related to the curricula of member Faculties; especially at the following projects: -„EnD“ since 2008. - Faculty of Economics in Subotica -„EcoLaw“ since 2006. – Faculty of Law (Novi Sad, Belgrade, Podgrica), Faculty of Political Sciences (Belgrade) -„SCAPES:LAB“ since 2009. – Faculty od Architecture (Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Nebojša Kosmajac SCAPES:LAB coordinator Updating CV.

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*We believe that experience holds more than mere representation of it

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BELGRADE.SCAPES:LAB / BiG PROJECTS To be continued.

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