BELGRADE CULTURAL CENTRE - FROM TOWN TO CITY IN DEED
TU DEFT, MArch, 1st Year, Semester 1
Project Description:
The Project site is located in Belgrade (Serbia). The design process started by a thorough analysis of the city and the ongoing developments, in order to understand the needs of Belgrade and address them. Studying the city I identified the lack of contemporary cultural institutions and that some of the most significant city’s museums had been closed down for around a decade. Across the site, the Watefront Project, a luxury accommodation complex was supposed to be complete by 2016 which had actually hardly even began. Serbians protested against their government’s response to the Country’s bad economical situation by investing in building apartments that are not suitable for the majority of the population, not understanding the city’s actual needs, and the public’s need to have a voice that can be heard.
From the research findings, Serbian’s lack of voice was an issue of a great interest for me. Consequently I investigated the Hannah Arendt’s theory on “Speaking” and Patrick Geddes’s Concept of “Town to City in Deed”. Based on Arendt, speaking cannot be understood without acting. According to Geddes, the evolution of Town into the City in Deed, a city where people act, can be achieved by initially evolving the individuals, taking them through an educational journey through schools and cloisters of ideas.
Based on this analysis, the proposal focused on a building where people’s voice would be formally expressed in the form of art, after going through an educational phase that would assist in their personal development and evolution.
That being said, my proposal consists of a journey through Belgrade’s history museum , a library- educational centre, leading to a Tower which houses workshop & collaboration areas on the first 5-floors, and artists’ studios and flexible working spaces on the rest. These artists in collaboration with the general public will be painting on the mesh façades surrounding the Tower, acting as a formal expression of public’s voice. The designs that will be presented on the façades could be for example the portrait of a significant for the country individual, the populations disappointment about the Waterfront Project and basically anything of a public interest. (Details of how this facade would operate can be found on the images below).
Please click on thumbnails below to view the photos
