Modernist architecture and urbanism in socialist Yugoslavia reveals many original and progressive models. The planning of cities and settlements in the period of vital postwar economic growth proves to have been of a particularly high level. It was comprehensive and well controlled with unprecedentedly greater responsibility dedicated to the common living environment, as it is perceived today. Architecture presented and served as a research laboratory for industry and a source of innovation in construction. And the political elite used modern buildings as a propaganda or communication tool with which to demonstrate to the world how advanced the country they managed and operated was.

Through various issues, processes and architectural projects in the countries of the former Yugoslavia the Unfinished Modernisations project definitively fills in some grey areas in the world history of modern architecture. The topic of this collective research, which concludes with a conference in Ljubljana, is interesting owing to questions emerging from enhanced insight into the architectural production that has been rejected as irrelevant and outdated since the moment society (here) embraced democracy and the market economy. Now, when social ideals as well as critical and experimental approaches to building are again at the forefront of architectural thinking, discourse and practice, it is both highly relevant and revealing to study the spatial layer that was created with the modern production of space and to try and determine its legacy for the future. Did we understand modernism, its protagonists and manifestos, well enough or were we too superficial in our reading of them? What are their key messages to the contemporary production of architecture? How much does an architect, whose role is now (and forever) changing, still refer to the “heroic times” of modernism? Can modernist activism, faith in progress and a collective social conscience, still be detected within the profession?

The purpose of Unfinished Modernisations – as is reflected in the title – is no idealization of the period, nor of the system in which the architectural and urban production under discussion developed. Because of its undeniable shortcomings modernisations are not finished, they are incomplete. But at the same time this incompleteness, with which we are faced daily, presents a situation that we need – now and further in the future – to address.

At the closing conference of the Unfinished Modernisations project these and other questions will be raised, with international architectural critics, theorists and researchers who will respond with their won particular points of reference: Nicholas Fox Weber (Director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, USA), Owen Hatherley (writer and journalist, London), Hans Ibelings (editor, A10 New European Architecture, Amsterdam), Breda Mihelič (art historian, director of the Urban Planning Institute, Slovenia, Ljubljana), Maroje Mrduljaš (project leader, Unfinished Modernisations, Zagreb). On the first day a public interview will be held with architect Stanko Kristl, one of the main protagonists of modernist architecture in Slovenia. He will be interviewed by architect Tina Gregoric (Dekleva Gregoric arhitekti, Ljubljana) and architect Tadej Glažar (Vice-Dean, Faculty of Architecture, Ljubljana). On the second day of the conference visitors will be able to listen to presentations of the researchers who participated in the Unfinished Modernisations project: Alenka Di Battista (Slovenia), Luciano Basauri (Croatia), Dafne Berc (Croatia), Nika Grabar (Slovenia), Jelena Grbić (Serbia), Jelica Jovanović (Serbia), Ivan Kucina (Serbia), Višnja Kukoč (Croatia), Ana Lovrenčič (Croatia), Nina Ugljen-Ademović (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Dragana Petrović (Serbia), Antun Sevšek (Croatia), Biljana Spirkoska (Macedonia), Jasna Stefanovska (Macedonia), Sašo Ivanovski (Macedonia), Irena Šentevska (Serbia) and Elša Turkušić (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

Lectures
The first day of lectures is available on-line at the web page of media sponsor Videolectures.net.

Uvod Matevž Čelik	Između utopije i pragmatizma Maroje Mrduljaš	Slovenski urbanizem v obdobju modernizma Breda Mihelič
Le Corbusier: A Life Nicholas Fox Weber	Militant Modernism Owen Hatherley	The Western Balkans on the architecture map Hans Ibelings

Project Partners

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Opening

Registration: 9.30

Admission

19 € / 10 € (students). Payment: MAO ticket office or bank account:: 01100-6000034749, held at UJP, SWIFT code: BSLJSI2X, note »Simpozij MAO«. Send completed Application form to Download the programme

Organization

Partners of Unfinished Modernisation
Društvo arhitekata Beograda, Beograd
Koalicija za održivi razvoj, Skopje
Muzej za arhitekturo in oblikovanje, Ljubljana
Oris Kuča arhitekture, Zagreb
Udruženje arhitekata Hrvatske, Zagreb
Umetnostna galerija Maribor, Maribor