Unfinished Modernisations – Between Utopia and Pragmatism 

Architecture and Urban Planning in Former Yugoslavia and its Successor States 

Unfinished Modernisations is a collaborative, long-term research platform on architecture and urban planning.  It brings together partners from both institutional and non-institutional sectors from South-Eastern Europe: TrajekT, (Slovenia), Umetnostna galerija Maribor (Maribor Art Gallery) (Slovenia),  the Croatian Architects’ Society and the Institute for Contemporary Architecture, Zagreb (Croatia), the Belgrade Architects Society, Belgrade (Serbia) and the Coalition for Sustainable Development, Skopje, (Macedonia). The initiators and authors of the concept of the project are Vladimir Kulić and Maroje Mrduljaš.

The project is aimed at fostering interdisciplinary research on the production of built environment in its social, political and cultural contexts. It encompasses the countries that succeeded former Yugoslavia, spanning the period from the inception of the socialist state until today.  The topic of the 14 researches is the way in which divergent concepts of modernization conditioned architecture, territorial transformations, and urban phenomena.  The project seeks to detect effective, resilient, and socially responsible models of architecture and urban planning in socialist Yugoslavia and its successor states. Special attention is going to be paid to critical re-reading of modernization processes and contextualization of local architectural and urban planning concepts within the framework of international evolution of architectural discourse. While largely unexplored and lacking appropriate interpretation, many of the models created in the region were original and experimental and may be used as inspiration for a progressive current practice both inside and beyond the regional borders. The project also seeks to reconstruct an important segment of the shared history of Central and South-Eastern Europe and to strengthen cross-cultural respect and understanding through trans-national collaboration and mobility.

Unfinished Modernisations will be carried out through a variety of activities: 14 researches, 5 conferences (Zagreb, Skopje, Beograd, Split, Maribor), exhibitions, publications, and interactive web-site/blogs. All these efforts will culminate in a final exhibition in Maribor (Slovenia), the 2012 Cultural Capital of Europe, which will give the project broad European exposure.

Working method 

Unfinished Modernisations - Between Utopia and Pragmatism will analyse and compare the production of built environment in two opposed economic and political systems: those of socialist Yugoslavia and the market-based democracies that emerged out of its collapse. The region is especially conducive to such comparative analysis because its successor states share the same heritage of a common socialist project of modernisation, but are at the same time highly divergent in terms of their social and economic development. The project will identify and interpret how the spatial politics of the two systems conditioned architectural and urban solutions and their social, ecological, and cultural impact.  It will simultaneously pay attention to unique concepts and products and to general processes and phenomena. We seek to identify the sustainable models of urban development and the possibilities of encouraging progressive architectural practises. 

The project is divided into four thematic segments with corresponding symposia/workshops: Critical Theory and Historical Reinterpretations; Outlining the Phenomena and Mediating Architecture; Transitional and Post-transitional Conditions; Current Practises and Perspectives. 

Research topics vary from theoretical analyses to the applied research of the specific spatial manifestations of modernization. They are all interrelated and designed to support each other, producing a collective knowledge-base and documentation. Stage results of every research will be presented at symposia and collectively discussed among the research teams. Relevant international and regional experts will be invited to the symposia to give public lectures and contribute to the debate. Panel discussions will be open to the public, introducing citizens as active protagonist in the research process. This experimental method will encourage a bottom-up approach to urban planing in the region. 

In its first phase, the project will provide a theoretical framework for research, map characteristic architectural and urban solutions, and the conditions that produced them. This phase will be summed up in an intermediary workshop, thus sketching a critical history of the modernisation of built environment in the former Yugoslav countries.  

In the second phase, the research will focus on continuities and discontinuities of modernisation processes from the late socialist period, to the transition, post-transition and contemporary situations. This phase will seek to identify adaptable and resilient models that survived the rapidly changing conditions. It will ultimately explore the ways to continue, adapt, and transform the interrupted modernisation processes in order to benefit the broader public interests, rather than the particularised ones of the emergent political and economic elites. 

The project's final product will be a travelling exhibition accompanied by an edited volume.  Both will present the accumulated knowledge, inciting a broad public debate about the relationship between the productive heritage of local modernisations and the current international trends.