The presentation of architectural projects and large-scale urban arrangements from the period of (socialist) Yugoslavia highlights milestones and visions of (unfinished) urbanization and industrialization in the period of socialism and raises questions about the role and legacy of the architectural heritage of this period in the countries...
The presentation of architectural projects and large-scale urban planning from the period of (socialist) Yugoslavia highlights the milestones and visions of (unfinished) urbanization and industrialization during the socialist era and raises questions about the role and legacy of the architectural heritage of this period in the successor states. Unfinished Modernizations sheds light on the spaces created by “socialist progress” in the former Yugoslavia and examines what happened to these spaces after the collapse of the common state and the abolition of socialism. The exhibition focuses on the production of physical space, not as a consequence, but as one of the basic means of socialist modernization. The role of architecture in this production is important, as it also intervenes in the symbolic spaces in which the production took place: geopolitical, cultural, economic, ideological spaces, etc.
During the socialist Yugoslavia, modernization was presented unambiguously as everyday great common achievements that were supposed to reveal the progress of workers' self-management and be a source of pride for the people. The lives of Yugoslavs were marked by megalomaniacal, almost utopian projects in the fields of industry, energy, transport connections, and urban planning. On the other hand, socialist utopianism is today often a synonym or "original sin" for an inadequate economic structure, ecological problems, and social friction. The exhibition presents characteristic architectural and urban practices of the socialist period in relation to the social context in which they were created. The collective result of the work of young researchers from Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia is among related current projects that shed new light on the established history of world architecture and shatter the monolithic belief about urban modernization on the other side of the Iron Curtain and in the former Yugoslavia.
The exhibition presents architectural projects, from tourism experiments on the Adriatic coast, designs for new cities and important public buildings, to memorials in the period from the communist takeover in 1945 to the collapse of the SFRY in 1991. With a temporal and political distance, it explores the socialist architectural legacy of Yugoslavia and reminds us of the creative connections that are physically present in the urban space of the former common state. The project is the result of a two-year project in which MAO participated as one of the partners, together with the Maribor Art Gallery, UHA/Association of Croatian Architects (Zagreb), DAB/Society of Belgrade Architects, KOR/Coalition for Sustainable Development (Skopje) and Hiša Oris (Zagreb).
Curator: Maroje Mrduljaš (HR), Vladimir Kulić (SR/USA)
Co-curators: Matevž Čelik (SI), Antun Sevšek (HR), Simona Vidmar (SI)
