Understanding City Growth
Many citizens of Belgrade have the impression that Belgrade is losing its identity and urban functionality. This is the result of accelerated city growth without a clear development strategy which cares about the city and its citizens.
We will try to find out how new generations of creative people coming from other contexts perceive the city of Belgrade and its future growth through a three-year programme that would focus on urban planning, architecture and ecology. Three editions of fortnight-long residency programmes per year will be organized in the first and the second years. BINA will invite creatives selected through the platform open call. Their task will be to respond to the topic through different forms and media of expression: design proposals, films, photographs or essays. Creatives will be paired with a local team/person that will be selected by an open call or invited by BINA. During their stay, BINA will organize presentations of creatives’ work in the most appropriate format and medium for each participant.
Collaboration with LINA fellows
Francesca Cocchiara and Sergios Striglkogiannis (Italy/Greece)
Atlas of Urban Mythologies/Chapter: Belgrade
As part of the 2022–23 LINA Architecture Programme, Francesca and Sergios stayed in Belgrade in February and May 2023. Research and work done in Belgrade are to be included in the project "Atlas of Urban Mythologies", a collection of urban narratives, which will consist of chapters dedicated to different cities: Athens, Nicosia, Tbilisi, Basel, Tirana, Ljubljana and Belgrade. As preparation for their stay, the BINA team provided texts about the city’s history, an overview of 20th century urban plans, as well as a series of texts that provide an insight into the current, post-2000’s situation defined by the property transformation of the housing stock, restitution and investor urbanism. During his stay in Belgrade in February 2023, Sergios Strigklogiannis closely collaborated with Ljiljana Radošević, art historian, expert and connoisseur of street art, and got acquainted with the topography and history of Belgrade. At the same time, he came into contact with the Ministry of Space collective (Jovana Timotijević, architect, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Political Sciences), whose focus is advocacy for democratic and fair development of the city: democratization of the management of public spatial resources, participatory planning and the right to housing. Upon his return to Athens, based on personal insight and conducted interviews, a series of documentary photographs and video material, Sergios and Francesca worked on the Belgrade chapter of the "Atlas of Urban Mythologies". In this chapter, in an extremely insightful and humorous way, through the form of a dramatic text, they talk about the neuralgic points of the city, gentrification, the disappearance of green areas, the status and affordability of the old (up to 1990s) and the new housing stock (post 2000s). And precisely by pointing out these phenomena, they touch on spatial discrimination as their immediate consequences, visible through the increasingly pronounced segregation of the population, rich - middle class - poor, which was not characteristic of Belgrade until 20 years ago.
On LINA DAY, May 13, Sergios and Francesca presented the Belgrade chapter. In addition to the participants of the LINA platform, some international BINA participants and a few foreign students, the audience at the presentation was predominantly made up of representatives of the local professional and general audience. The presentation followed by the discussion was extremely well evaluated, the problems were well located, the correlation between different historical and spatial narratives was successfully established. The completed chapter on Belgrade contains all the elements that the authors defined in the announcement of their project: the urban issues that will be analyzed and highlighted, references to support the theoretical framework of their research and a collection of skillfully chosen local stories that form the backbone of the plot. We would like to specially underline the literary style and the discreet but precise humor of this text, which contributes to making this text interesting to a wide audience, not only experts. We believe that the exceptional value of this project "Atlas of Urban Mythologies" is that it brings together a large number of LINA members (dpr-barcelona, S AM Swiss Architecture Museum, Barleti University, Tbilisi Architecture Biennale, Faculty of Architecture, Ljubljana and BINA) so the final edition will present the status, problems and challenges present in a number of European cities, and at the same time be an opportunity to make the work of Sergios Strigklogiannis and Francesca Cocchiara visible to a wide audience and be an impulse for their further work and career . The next step in the realization of this project is the finalization of all chapters, the preparation of online promotion and the release of the printed edition of "Atlas of Urban Mythologies" published by dpr-barcelona.
"…By the river, here’s where I found them. I was still on my boat, passing under the bridge, but I decided to drop anchor there at the Sava amphitheater once I saw them. They were immersed in their conversation, so I went unnoticed and pulled out my camera. One of them must have been a deity, her adorned hair and dress looked from ancient times, but her face was ageless. She sat on her throne the whole time, showing tiredness and resignation more than once. By her side stood a giant holding a tree in its hand. I was expecting it would smash it with its concrete jaws wide open, but somehow it didn’t. In front of the giant, an army of six sergeants settled down; they were all proudly coated in red suits, showing their side profiles and speaking synchronized. Next to them sat a massive, wet, inflated, yellow duck. It didn’t seem bothered by the large banner stuck under its belly, and I wondered what was written on it.”
- Excerpt from Atlas of Urban Mythologies by Sergios Strigklogiannis and Francesca Cocchiara
Rebeka Bratož Gornik (Slovenia)
Documentary film "Public Housing: Belgrade Mode"
Rebeka Bratož Gornik completed her residency during April and May 2023. Her arrival in Belgrade was preceded by thorough preparation, which she carried out in cooperation with members of the BINA team as well as on her own. From the very beginning of her preparations, the author was focused on the topic of public housing. In accordance with that, she was provided with the necessary material related to this topic, and contacts were established with experts who are relevant to this field: urban planners and architects, legal experts and political scientists. With the intention of getting as complete a picture of this topic as possible, contact was made with citizens/residents and representatives of the youngest generation, students of architecture as those who will plan and build future facilities. During her first stay, and on the basis of previous preparations, in addition to an exhaustive tour of the city, and above all the settlements with collective housing, Rebecca conducted and filmed a series of interviews. During her one-week stay, she managed to record an impressive amount of material, which upon her return she edited and created a 16 min documentary film. The film was translated and subtitled into English. During the first public screening on LINA DAY, May 13, the audience was shown a film with a very precise and critical attitude, based on research and work in the field, and conversations with well-chosen participants, who each shed light on this problem from their own perspective. The film clearly recognizes the state of inequality in the affordability of housing as one of the basic human needs and rights indicating the need to find a solution to this problem in order to ensure a fairer and more democratic development of the city. At the same time, the film draws attention to the existence of previous good and high-quality solutions, as well as to the search for new ways of financing and cooperative organization of citizens in order to solve the housing issue independently. The film was well received by the audience, especially the local audience, who welcomed the insightful way of presenting the situation which encouraged them to join the discussion. The comments were primarily related to innovative models of self-organization of tenants with the aim of providing housing space on their own, and models for improving the inclusion of citizens in decision-making processes, especially those related to the issue of housing for sensitive and marginalized groups.
While working on the film, Rebeka Bratož Gornik collaborated with local colleagues: Jelica Jovanović, architect, Collective of Architects; Zlata Vukasnović Macura, architect, Institute of Geography, SASA; Danilo Ćuričić, lawyer, A 11 – Initiative for Economic and Social Rights; Jovana Timotijević, architect and Marko Aksentijević, graduate of Political Science, Collective Ministry of Space, Ana Džokić, architect, European Cooperative Society, MOBA Housing; Ivana Tomić, student, Faculty of Architecture, Belgrade
Collective spacesforfuture.org – Angelika Hinterbrandner, Rebeka Hirschberg and Laura Bertlet
(Germany/Austria/Switzerland)
The collective spacesforfuture.org consists of 7 members with different professional backgrounds. During May, three female architects stayed in Belgrade and conducted their research in line with their dominant interest - the global housing crisis with a special focus on affordable housing. Consulting with experts Dubravka Sekulić, architect, Royal College of Arts, London and Nikola Mitrović, researcher from the Faculty of Architecture, Belgrade, spaceforfuture.org visited some of the most important residential neighborhoods and based on the insight into the available online documentation, they supplemented the database necessary for their comparative research, which they do on this topic in several European countries. Upon completion of the research, the results and recommendations for solving this European and global problem will be presented online and in print and delivered to all relevant planning institutions and organizations.
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