academic design studios
This is the work of Design Studio 4 - a Masters design studio operating under the Oxford Brookes School of Architecture RIBA Part 2 Masters programme (MArchD) where studio founder, Louise, assisted as Design Tutor.
Here you will find a summary of the studios interests, research and work during the academic year of 2019-2020 within the city of Belgrade, Serbia.
Design Tutors;
Professor Nicholas Boyarsky (lead) | Jason Coleman | Louise Cann
Managment, Practice + Law Tutors;
Graham Modlen
Technology Tutors;
Barti Garibaldo | Jason Coleman
Thank you to our critics and hosts;
Jovana Timotijevic | Iva Čukić | Nebojša Milikić | Jelica Jovanovic | Katie Reilly | Magacin
DS4's interests are based on a direct physical engagement with the city and architecture, and a commitment to thinking through making. We site our research in the Baltikans project, a collaborative exploration of the former socialist controlled fringe of the Baltics and the Balkans. The project has to date worked in Estonia, Mostar, and Sarajevo in Bosnia Herzegovina and Skopje in Macedonia, alongside students from Sweden, Finland, Bosnia and the Stalker Group from Rome. This year we worked in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and the former capital of Tito's Yugoslavia and now the site of a deeply contested public realm.
Our studio ethos requires close contact with the physical city and collaboration and dialogue with key players and issues on the ground. We work with local NGOs, Stealth Unlimited and the Ministry of Space in Belgrade and planned workshops in collaboration with local students of architecture.
The studio's work is focused on crafting material and fictional narratives in the fast moving present where new alliances and divisions are emerging which are blurring memories and politicising identities. We work at different scales, from infrastructural landscapes to detailed observations of material transformations. We focus on how narratives and material propositions can forge new relationships with the anthropocene.
Projects are based on researching the rich and diverse urban landscapes of Belgrade and to explore and catalogue the interfaces between the natural conditions of the site, the historic city, the infrastructures and visionary socialist architectures of Tito's Yugoslavia, the 'turbo architectures' and informal settlements that comprise 40% of the city, and the neo-liberal plans for Belgrade Waterfront.
Current uncontrolled neo-liberal developments ('turbo architecture') are contrasted with the rituals and iconography of the ancient Bogomils, with Islamic traditions of architecture and Ottoman city building, the socialist Neo Beograd, and the contingent Roma city that has developed are measured against the aspirations and search for identity of the Serbians met.
In parrallel students studied the visionary architectural works of Bogdan Bogdanovic, Vjenceslav Richter, Juraj Neidhardt, Vera Cirkovic, Mihajlo Mitrovic and many others.
Following a series of workshops and group installation projects we visited Belgrade where we were hosted and guided by members of the Magacin Commons collective on site visits to New Belgrade and the informal settlement of Kaluđerica.
Students engaged directly with the current, fast moving city.
We witnessed the fast changing conditions of Belgrade such as the city’s uneasy relationship with refugees from the Middle East, the extent of corruption and censorship, and the massive neo-liberal Belgrade Waterfront development. The state of decay of much of the heroic architecture of Tito’s era, the lack of spatial justice, the intolerance of LGBT communities, the opportunities that commoning and activism can bring to the city, issues around the refugee crisis, turbo-charged illegal housing, and the future of social housing all prompted students to develop individual projects that were resolved with fine-grained architectural propositions. The ruins of the Ministry of Defence buildings that were bombed by NATO in 1999 formed the site for two students to explore issues of nationalism, the curated ruin and the anti-monument.
Images
In order of appearance; Amalin Mahadon © | Alyssa Zhong Lin Yap © | Isabel Gomez © | Patryk Kubic © | Desmond Ho Man Chow © | Charlotte Brookhouse © | Enes Osmani ©
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