Papers by Aleksandar Bede
AGG+ Journal for Architecture, Civil Engineering, Geodesy and Related Scientific Fields, 2024
In this paper, three case studies of various nature, scale and position within the discipline are... more In this paper, three case studies of various nature, scale and position within the discipline are identified and analyzed, as exemplary of Vojvodina in the discussion of large-scale projects of socialist Yugoslavia. Interpretive-historical method is used to describe and interpret the case studies, while primary sources are subjected to qualitative content analysis in order to extract the underlying narratives of these projects, as well as to establish their position more firmly in the field. The first one is the Grand Canal Danube-Tisa-Danube (DTD waterway), the biggest spatial project of Vojvodina, conceptualized by the engineer Nikola Mirkov since 1947 a completed by early 1980's. The second is the case of two plans for road and railway networks in Vojvodina by the architect Dimitrije Marinković, from his 1950 General Plan of Novi Sad, which proved to be more visionary than plans made by spatial planning institutions since. The third case is a network of memorial graveyards Rohalj Baze (1973) and Jabuka (1974) on the Fruška Gora mountain by the architect Milorad Berbakov, as an example of a new landscape-based paradigm of Yugoslav memorial architecture in Vojvodina. The questions discussed in this paper are: 1) the importance of narratives for the success of a project; 2) the expanded definition of projects to include networks; 3) arts as networks (with Neoplanta Film as a showcase); 4) the creative output of individual creators versus institutions. Key words: Vojvodina, spatial planning, Great Canal Danube-Tisa-Danube, DTD waterways, canals, Nikola Mirkov, Dimitrije Marinković, Yugoslav monuments, Milorad Berbakov, Fruška Gora, Rohalj Baze, Jabuka, Neoplanta Film.
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Život umjetnosti, Jun 2015
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Books by Aleksandar Bede
Knjiga "Spens: mera grada" rezultat je višegodišnjeg rada njenih autora, oslonjena i na napore dr... more Knjiga "Spens: mera grada" rezultat je višegodišnjeg rada njenih autora, oslonjena i na napore drugih istraživača, savremenika, korisnika, svedoka i učesnika, koji su takođe dali svoj doprinos razumevanju nastajanja i trajanja Spensa.
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AS A COUPLE, FOR SOCIETY.
The Architecture of Sibin Djordjević and Milena Stanković Djordjević.
... more AS A COUPLE, FOR SOCIETY.
The Architecture of Sibin Djordjević and Milena Stanković Djordjević.
Sibin Djordjević (1926-2013) and Milena Stanković Djordjević (1924-2015) were a couple and architects who belonged to the first post-war generation of students that graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1950. At the time the country was not only in the process of post-war reconstruction, but a whole new socialist society had to be redesigned, including its architecture. This was the context in which Milena and Sibin met, graduated, got married, had a daughter and began their collaboration. They were employed by the state and ended up in Novi Sad in 1953, where they were given chief positions in one of the municipal architectural studios. In the following decade they designed some of the most prominent examples of the international modernist and functionalist architecture in the city. Their design style was influenced by Sibin’s six month fellowship in France in 1954, awarded by the city of Novi Sad, where Siblin was exposed to contemporary French architectural and urban planning. Remarkable structures designed by the couple include the University Campus, Faculty of Agriculture, Town Hall, as well as numerous residential, business, and administrative buildings. Through colleagues in West Germany, Sibin and Milena seized the opportunity to move to Stuttgart in 1963, where they started working and stayed for the rest of their lives. They worked for the state, designing buildings such as colleges, boarding schools, and other public facilities in towns surrounding Stuttgart, well into the 1980’s, until they retired. They remained unknown in Germany due to their public clerk status, which prevented them from having the sole authorship over their designs and favored the public institution as the author. This was in stark contrast to their previous experience in Yugoslavia, where, although having worked for the state as well, they had a certain public figure status, often featured in the local newspapers and interviewed about ongoing construction projects.
Aleksandar Bede, while in fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in autumn 2013, has gone to meet Milena Stanković Djordjević. Her husband Sibin has passed away just shortly before. From the initial conversations with Milena, Aleksandar has developed a 2-year research about the lives and work of her and Sibin. The research included collecting archival materials, visiting project sites, and maintaining communication with Milena, to get her story. This book is the result of that research. It features the catalog of their body of work, both in Yugoslavia and in West Germany. The catalog features Milena’s comments about their life and projects.
The legacy of Sibin and Milena is generated from within the community and for the community. It is in these relationships and stories that architecture of public buildings represents the material infrastructure of the society. The quality of such architecture is the fact that it has become a non-intrusive backdrop, functioning as a radiator of urbanity in its built environment.
The book is bilingual, in Serbian and German.
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Ova publikacija rezultat je istraživanja koje je proizašlo iz saradnje dva kolektiva: Centra za n... more Ova publikacija rezultat je istraživanja koje je proizašlo iz saradnje dva kolektiva: Centra za nove medije_kuda.org iz Novog Sada i arhitektonskog para Analog iz Zagreba (Dafne Berc i Luciano Basauri). Istraživanje je započeto u okviru tromesečnog programa boravka umetnika i umetnica u Novom Sadu, u organizaciji Centra_kuda.org i Zavoda za kulturu Vojvodine i u saradnji sa Akademie Schloss Solitude iz Štutgarta. U okviru ovog programa arhitekte Dafne i Luciano su boravili u Novom Sadu početkom 2012. godine.
Saradnja je proizašla iz potrebe da se nastavi istraživački kontinuitet na pitanjima urbanog stanja i razvoja Novog Sada, što je tema kojom smo se bavili 2010. godine u okviru projekta A(u)kcija – registar novosadskih prostora između ličnih interesa i javnih potreba. Dok je cilj tog projekta bilo temeljno dijagnostikovanje svih onih mesta na kojima gradskost Novog Sada kao zajednice škripi, kod "Latentnost u gradu" smo želeli da na odabranoj grupi prostornih problema pokažemo kakav teorijsko-tehnički aparat je neophodno imati kao podlogu za promišljanje budućnosti tih prostora, imajući na umu komplementarnost profesionalnih urbanističkih pristupa (institucionalnih ili ne) sa praticipativnošću građana i korisnika tih prostora.
I pored mnoštva mogućih istraživačkih putanja koje su se A(u)kcijom otvorile, tema novog istraživanja se javila nezavisno, i to iz autentičnog prvog utiska gostujućih istraživača o Novom Sadu, a to je utisak panorame grada prilikom prelaska Mosta slobode. Vizura topografije grada na reci posetiocima postaje osnovna geomorfološka prostorna koordinata od koje dalje kreće otključavanje i tumačenje ostatka grada. Ta prva impresija je dovela do saznanja da se mnogi vredni i još uvek neizgrađeni prostori u gradu upravo nižu uz Dunav i čine jedan sistem praznina (voids), zajedno sa rekom kao večitom prazninom. Ta praznina upravo konstituiše osnovni geografski identitet Novog Sada, što je dovelo do stava da i artificijelne urbane mikro-praznine unutar gradskog tkiva možda treba promišljati kao vredne upravo zbog njihove neizgrađenosti, jer komuniciraju nešto od te prirodne konstantne u unutrašnjosti gradskog prostora.
Na taj način se iskristalisala početna hipoteza: da se razvoj urbanosti Novog Sada krije u čuvanju ovih prostora od izgradnje. Usvajanjem takvog stava pomera se fokus ka onim zahvatima koji se tiču, pre svega, dostupnosti odabranih lokacija, povećanja kvaliteta urbanog prostora i ustanovljavanja različitih praksi aktivnog korišćenja ovih prostora od strane građana. Jer, urbanost leži u tim kategorijama, a ne u izgradnji ogoljenih stambeno-poslovnih kapaciteta.
Pa ipak ni takav pristup ne garantuje pravo rešenje za naše praznine, jer ne smemo zaboraviti da je gradska teritorija izuzetno produktivan resurs. Bilo izgrađen ili neizgrađen, bitno je da bude što pravednije iskorišćen i dostupan što raznovrsnijim grupama građana. Stoga smo pristupili kompleksnoj dijagnozi odabranih praznina koje, na primer, tržište samo ne može da postavi, jer se vodi ograničenim pokazateljima – profitom i vlasništvom. Prema tome, ukoliko je izgradnja vrednog gradskog prostora neophodna, treba je pažljivo programirati prema procesima i potrebama celokupnog gradskog metabolizma. Jer kako bi se razumele praznine, neophodno je razumeti prvo grad.
Prema tome, cilj ove publikacije jeste da se promeni percepcija odabranih praznina u gradu, upravo kako bi se dovela u pitanje viđenje tih lokacija kao praznih. A to je najčešći slučaj kada je u pitanju institucionalno bavljenje takvim lokacijama, bilo na fakultetu ili u urbanističkom zavodu. U tom smislu, ponudili smo model istraživačke podloge koja bi takođe mogla dalje da se razvija participativnijim planiranjem tj. učešćem korisnika u okviru postojećih neformalnih režima korišćenja odabranih praznina. Uspostavljanje takve planerske prakse u Novom Sadu tek predstoji.
Izdavač: Centar za nove medije_kuda.org, Novi Sad.
Godina izdanja: 2012.
Autori: Luciano Basauri, Dafne Berc, Aleksandar Bede.
ISBN 978-86-88567-05-3.
COBISS.SR- ID 276070919.
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Book Chapters by Aleksandar Bede
Pejzaži potrošačke kulture u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji/Landscapes of Consumer Culture in Socialist Yugoslavia, 2018
Dvojezično srpski/engleski.
Bilingual Serbian/English.
Poglavlje u knjizi/Chapter in book: "P... more Dvojezično srpski/engleski.
Bilingual Serbian/English.
Poglavlje u knjizi/Chapter in book: "Pejzaži potrošačke kulture u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji/Consumer Culture Landscapes in Socialist Yugoslavia". Slobodne veze (Zagreb) & Onomatopee (Eindhoven), 2018.
Urednici/editors: Nataša Bodrožić, Lidija Butković Mićin, Saša Šimpraga.
Radna preprint verzija/Working preprint version. O poduhvatu izdavanja knjige čitajte na: https://pogledaj.to/arhitektura/drustvene-aspiracije-vremena/
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Neoplanta Film: History of the Production and Its Place in Urbanism of Novi Sad and Vojvodina. A ... more Neoplanta Film: History of the Production and Its Place in Urbanism of Novi Sad and Vojvodina. A chapter in book: 'Novi Sad -- A Modern City' [Novi Sad -- Moderni grad]. Novi Sad: Faculty of Technical Sciences, BAZA, 2023.
English abstract of the originally Serbian chapter>>>
Neoplanta Film was a Yugoslav cinematic production company. It was founded by the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in 1966 in Novi Sad, in order for it to have an official production house like all the other federal units of the country. The kernel of the company was a free cinematic group called Neoplanta, made up of amateurs who, in those years, started to get commissions by public institutions to make documentaries. What followed was a stellar growth in success of the group of directors and the entire company of Neoplanta Film, who quickly managed to re-orient themselves from documentaries about local construction and modernization projects to short and feature films that won many festival awards internationally, like Želimir Žilnik's film "Early Works" that won the Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival in 1969. Dušan Makavejev's cult feature film "WR: Mysteries of the Organism", released in 1971, was swiftly banned by the state censors, even though it gained widespread international acclaim. The communist state's establishment decided to end the creative freedoms of Neoplanta Film and replaced the founding director of the company, Svetozar Udovički, with a trusted apparatchik. Many of the founding creatives left with Udovički, and some even emigrated to the West. Neoplanta Film contiunued with its production with the new management throughout the 1970's and 80's, but it never regained the international fame and reputation of its "golden age". What finally ended the company was the megalomaniac historical partisan-themed film "Great Transport", done as a co-production with American and Italian companies. Neoplanta Film didn't manage to produce the film on time, was sued by the co-producers, and went bankrupt in 1986.
The legacy of the early years of Neoplanta Film has ever since been capturing the interest of the cinephiles and academics globally. Its grass-roots success and individual creativity is recognizes as one of the key nodes in what is today named Yugoslav Neo-Avantgarde movement. The thematic and cinematic approach developed by Neoplanta Film's directors is today seen as a non-institutional socialist alternative to the state and party-socialism. But due to their professional roots in producing documentaries about urban and territorial modernization of Novi Sad and Vojvodina in the 1960's, I suggest that Neoplanta Film could be claimed by the discipline of urbanism as the heritage that belongs to its domain. The movies of Neoplanta Film can be viewed as one of the urban and territorial infrastructural layers, alongside railways, canals, roads, industries and settlements. This could be the infrastructure of societal memory and its history, due to the movies' constitutive role in this space's modernization project. In that way, movies can reveal the narrative and conceptual foundations on which those roads, rails, and canals were built, regardless if they were explicitly documentaries or not. The modernization of the country through infrastructural projects was inseparable from the modernization of the society through cinematic production.
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Most | Časopis za kulturu nevladinih organizacija Vojvodine, 2015
Ambicija ovog teksta jeste da postavi prava pitanja koja bi omogućila da se adekvatno otvori disk... more Ambicija ovog teksta jeste da postavi prava pitanja koja bi omogućila da se adekvatno otvori diskusija o budućnosti strukovnog udruživanja arhitekata u Vojvodini, u vremenu kada se čini da je smisao ovakve društvene prakse teže odrediti nego ikad. Ovo "ikad" se zapravo odnosi na poslednjih sto godina, što je period u kom se može pratiti strukovno organizovanje arhitekata na ovim prostorima u današnjem smislu te reči. U tom periodu je ova praksa prošla kroz razne faze, dosegla značajne domete, a potom doživela izvesni pad, sve do današnje pretnje potpunog nestanka iz društvenog života. Ovakav utisak pre svega proizilazi iz poteškoće da se odredi uloga arhitektonske discipline u današnjem političkom i ekonomskom sistemu u Srbiji, što je trend koji se pokazuje iznenađujuće stabilnim s obzirom na činjenicu da su se političke okolnosti naizgled nekoliko puta menjale u periodu restauracije kapitalizma na ovim prostorima, dakle nakon napuštanja projekta socijalističke Jugoslacije (od Miloševićevog izolacionizma, preko post-petooktobarskih reformi i privatizacija, do radikalnog neo-liberalizam današnjih vlasti). Čini se da su se neki uspesi i dostignuća strukovnih organizacja arhitekata u ovom periodu pokazala kratkog daha, usled, sa jedne strane, oslanjanja na inerciju nasleđenog statusa struke u društvu iz prethodnog perioda kojeg nije bilo tako lako razgraditi, te entuzijastičnog "kačenja" na nova "otvaranja" ka okruženju i svetskim trendovima, što se ipak pokazalo nedovoljnim za uspostavljanje dugoročnog i održivog modela strukovnog organizovanja u trenutnim okolnostima. Danas se čini da je glavna teškoća strukovnog reorganizovanja njegovo neslaženje na liniji kapital-država, što je i glavna pretpostavka ovog teksta koju ću pokušati da elaboriram, te ponuditi mogući model izlaska iz ovakve situacije. U tu svrhu je neophodno osvrnuti se na istorijat strukovnog udruživanja arhitekata na tlu Vojvodine. Mapiranje raznih tačaka samoinicijativnih okupljanja arhitekata te njihovog međusobnog umrežavanja na lokalnom i jugoslovenoskom nivou je ključni istraživački poduhvat koji tek treba preduzeti, a koji prevazilazi mogućnosti ovog teksta. Stoga ćemo ovde dati najosnovnije podatke koji su bili dosptuni, uz komentar da i nedostupnost podataka i praznina u znanju o nama samima doprinosi pravom oslikavanju stanja struke kod nas danas.
(Tekst je izašao u broju časopisa za kulturu nevladinih organizacija "Most" posvećenom strukovnim udruženjima u Vojvodini. Izdavač: Zavod za kulturu Vojvodine)
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Exhibition Publications by Aleksandar Bede
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Articles by Aleksandar Bede
Classic Planning Herald International #2, 2024
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Fokus na modernizam: Arhitektura Novog Sada 1970-1985, 2018
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Conference Presentations by Aleksandar Bede
THE HORIZONTAL METROPOLIS: A RADICAL PROJECT. VIII INTERNATIONAL PHD SEMINAR ‘URBANISM & URBANIZATION’ | SYMPOSIUM LATSIS EPFL 2015, 2015
This paper aims to investigate the case of the region of Vojvodina (in Serbia), with its particul... more This paper aims to investigate the case of the region of Vojvodina (in Serbia), with its particularities that make it an illustration of a horizontal infrastructural and settlement space that has developed and functioned autonomously from the nearby metropolis of Belgrade, in spite of being the city's hinterland. More importantly, the paper shows show the chosen set of case studies that represent innovative spatial typologies that have emerged from this peripheral but autonomous condition, especially focusing on the region's capital, the city of Novi Sad. These case studies are chosen due to their role in the previously existing project of the Yugoslav socialist state, which in itself included urban and territorial modernizations as one of the means of constructing the socialist society. Such kind of spatial agenda is non-existent in today's social or state narratives, and the physical structures that are left behind from the previous socialist period (1945-1991) have had different destines in adapting to the new conditions.
The context of this research is the autonomous region of Vojvodina, which was founded as one of the constitutive units of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Apart from this political autonomy, the region is marked by the particular way in which its territory has been artificialized and maintained throughout history – a condition which makes it quite different from the rest of the country (then Yugoslavia, today Serbia). Firstly, this region is a major hydrographic node in Central Europe. The landscape of Vojvodina is defined by the Danube river basin and its tributaries – a flat, fertile and partly swampy alluvial landscape that has always been exposed to the periodic floods and underground waters. In order to make it arable and inhabitable, it had to be meticulously maintained through constant investments in hydro-engineering projects. This has ultimately transformed the region into an artificial agricultural and subsequently industrial landscape with dense network of settlements, where industrial production depended heavily upon the supporting rail and canal network, and where the soil was kept productive only by controlling the drainage of excessive water. The modern-day canals date from the systematic construction of the canal network undertaken by the Habsburg court in the 18th century, but the final and most complex phase of construction has started was undertaking in the socialist Yugoslav times, from 1940’s to 1970’s, resulting in a total of 960km of canal network, out of which 600km were navigable. This was the material precondition that gave rise to all other territorial and urban development in the region, further strengthening it as a coherent network of settlements and industries, contrasting the nearby metropolis.
A particular interest of this paper represents the social component of the projects of territorial modernizations, due to the easily readable links between social and physical projects that are left as marks in the territory. Therefore this paper will offer a model of such a reading by choosing specific projects in the territory that have had a key role in societal narrative in total, and bring them together in one line or a chain of structures of different nature and scale. By lining the different scales and architectural and urban typologies the new possibilities for redefining geographical imaginations emerge, as well as new possibilities for mapping the shown projects and phenomena, which would in return bring new order into the discrepancies between their scales and diversity. We will show, on the chosen case studies of the modernizing projects from the times of Yugoslav socialism, how the narratives of building the socialist society has materialized on site, into structures that have since become physical and spatial carriers of that narrative. The innovation of that social project has resulted in equally innovative architectural and urban typologies that were means of modernization of the urban and regional space in that time. These include new railway infrastructure, urban recompositions, housing, public spaces and places of gathering, etc. This list extends further beyond the physical space, as the projects of territorial modernizations have also had originally unforeseen results in cultural productions, such as the cinematic project of the Neoplanta Film production house, first started off to document the spatial projects on film. Consequently, today these structures are in crisis and danger of neglects and disappearance due to the new economic conditions of transition into capitalism. Namely, they have found themselves without the original societal project which has created them, as well as without a new role in the today's social, political and economical agendas of the state. Thus they have lost their role in the societal narrative, as today's society to longer needs territorial modernizations as its integral part.
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URBANISM AFTER URBANISM. VII INTERNATIONAL PhD SEMINAR URBANISM & URBANIZATION. PARIS 3-5 October 2013, 2013
This research aims to territorialize the cinematic production of Neoplanta Film, a public film co... more This research aims to territorialize the cinematic production of Neoplanta Film, a public film company from Novi Sad that has played a major role in the avant-garde movement known as the New Yugoslav Film starting from the 1960’s. The idea to introduce this particular cinematic production to urbanism comes from the fact that it was conceived as a documentary film program about great infrastructural projects of that time in the Yugoslav region of Vojvodina. This mainly refers to canal network. Namely, from 1974 until early 1970’s a major hydro-engineering system called DTD (Danube-Tisa-Danube) canal network was built in Vojvodina, having further protected the territory from excessive waters and rendering it more inhabitable and productive. In order to document this construction process on tape, the regional government founded a public film company named Neoplanta Film in 1965. However, due to the specific conditions of self-management socialism and creative independence within the company, the authors also started making critical and experimental films about the conditions in the Yugoslav society, focusing themselves on otherwise capitalist phenomena such as unemployment, inequality, social injustice, homelessness, economic emigration. The corpus of these films became known as New Yugoslav Film and earned great success on the international cinematic scene, acquiring a cult status that they have until this day. Soon the political structures launched a media attack on these successful authors, cynically naming the movement “Black Wave”. This campaign ended in 1972 when government appointed a new director for Neoplanta Film, who ended the creative period of the company.
The idea of this research is to reverse the process within Neoplanta Film and bring the films of the “author phase” back into the context of space and engineering, where Neoplanta originally comes from, with a hypothesis that pronounces these films as infrastructural network that represents the narrative upon which the rest of this artificial territory is constructed. This is done through the method of terrain investigation and mapping of original set locations of films, which results in a newly emerged infrastructure in the landscape: a network of narratives of great public construction projects, precisely those that are jeopardized today by the process of privatization. The positions against this danger can be strengthened by adding the cinematic cultural layer that was part of the original construction process of these public goods, and by learning about the links between spatial construction and social reproduction that these films talk about.
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Conference: International Scientific Conference RETHINKING URBANISM. Faculty of Architecture Zagreb. May 19, 2012, 2012
This study shows – on the example of Mišeluk urban project in Novi Sad – how national and interna... more This study shows – on the example of Mišeluk urban project in Novi Sad – how national and international geopolitical instances, nominally in conflict (Serbia and NATO), actually stand on the same pole if we examine their impact on the local strategies of urban development. These relations are read from the differences between planned scenarios and implemented interventions in the zone in question. Mišeluk is a mainly unbuilt area in the Syrmian part of Novi Sad. After WWII this zone was planned to be the ground for the expansion of the city with its new center. The project set off in the late 1970’s with the construction of the headquarters of public TV station (TVNS) and the Liberty Bridge. These two objects became informal symbols of prosperous age of the autonomy of Vojvodina in socialist Yugoslavia. The Milošević regime, which abolished that autonomy, brought a hold on city's plans for Mišeluk through deregulation of planning instruments and with massive illegal development: a villa settlement of the new elite that rose from the exploits of war. The 2000's brought legalization of this settlement and introduction of two new Orthodox churches on each side of the bridge. None of the above was foreseen by the original plans for Mišeluk. The only implementations of these old plans – bridge and TV station – were destroyed in NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Today this city entrance is dominated by ruins of TVNS, a new church and illegal settlement. Therefore national and international factors can act in complementary manner through their symbolic and physical violent and anti-urban influence that ignores and even blocks local metabolic processes. Urban planning opens the possibility of redefining the globalizing nature of these instances.
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Talks by Aleksandar Bede
In his research Aleksandar Bede aims to territorialize the cinematic production of Neoplanta Film... more In his research Aleksandar Bede aims to territorialize the cinematic production of Neoplanta Film, a public film company from Novi Sad that has played a major role in the avant-garde movement known as the New Yugoslav Film starting from the 1960’s. The idea to introduce this particular cinematic production to urbanism comes from the fact that it was conceived as a documentary film program about great infrastructural projects of that time in the Yugoslav region of Vojvodina. This mainly refers to the construction of the Danube-Tisa-Danube canal network. However, due to the specific conditions of a self-management enterprise and creative freedom within the company, the authors started making critical and experimental films about the conditions in the Yugoslav society, focusing themselves on otherwise capitalist phenomena such as unemployment, inequality, social injustice, homelessness, economic emigration. In this research, the process is reversed and the films of the “author phase” are brought back into the context of space and engineering, where Neoplanta Film originally comes from. By pronouncing these films to be territorial infrastructure, a new possibility for re-interpretation of public good emerges.
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Papers by Aleksandar Bede
Books by Aleksandar Bede
The Architecture of Sibin Djordjević and Milena Stanković Djordjević.
Sibin Djordjević (1926-2013) and Milena Stanković Djordjević (1924-2015) were a couple and architects who belonged to the first post-war generation of students that graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1950. At the time the country was not only in the process of post-war reconstruction, but a whole new socialist society had to be redesigned, including its architecture. This was the context in which Milena and Sibin met, graduated, got married, had a daughter and began their collaboration. They were employed by the state and ended up in Novi Sad in 1953, where they were given chief positions in one of the municipal architectural studios. In the following decade they designed some of the most prominent examples of the international modernist and functionalist architecture in the city. Their design style was influenced by Sibin’s six month fellowship in France in 1954, awarded by the city of Novi Sad, where Siblin was exposed to contemporary French architectural and urban planning. Remarkable structures designed by the couple include the University Campus, Faculty of Agriculture, Town Hall, as well as numerous residential, business, and administrative buildings. Through colleagues in West Germany, Sibin and Milena seized the opportunity to move to Stuttgart in 1963, where they started working and stayed for the rest of their lives. They worked for the state, designing buildings such as colleges, boarding schools, and other public facilities in towns surrounding Stuttgart, well into the 1980’s, until they retired. They remained unknown in Germany due to their public clerk status, which prevented them from having the sole authorship over their designs and favored the public institution as the author. This was in stark contrast to their previous experience in Yugoslavia, where, although having worked for the state as well, they had a certain public figure status, often featured in the local newspapers and interviewed about ongoing construction projects.
Aleksandar Bede, while in fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in autumn 2013, has gone to meet Milena Stanković Djordjević. Her husband Sibin has passed away just shortly before. From the initial conversations with Milena, Aleksandar has developed a 2-year research about the lives and work of her and Sibin. The research included collecting archival materials, visiting project sites, and maintaining communication with Milena, to get her story. This book is the result of that research. It features the catalog of their body of work, both in Yugoslavia and in West Germany. The catalog features Milena’s comments about their life and projects.
The legacy of Sibin and Milena is generated from within the community and for the community. It is in these relationships and stories that architecture of public buildings represents the material infrastructure of the society. The quality of such architecture is the fact that it has become a non-intrusive backdrop, functioning as a radiator of urbanity in its built environment.
The book is bilingual, in Serbian and German.
Saradnja je proizašla iz potrebe da se nastavi istraživački kontinuitet na pitanjima urbanog stanja i razvoja Novog Sada, što je tema kojom smo se bavili 2010. godine u okviru projekta A(u)kcija – registar novosadskih prostora između ličnih interesa i javnih potreba. Dok je cilj tog projekta bilo temeljno dijagnostikovanje svih onih mesta na kojima gradskost Novog Sada kao zajednice škripi, kod "Latentnost u gradu" smo želeli da na odabranoj grupi prostornih problema pokažemo kakav teorijsko-tehnički aparat je neophodno imati kao podlogu za promišljanje budućnosti tih prostora, imajući na umu komplementarnost profesionalnih urbanističkih pristupa (institucionalnih ili ne) sa praticipativnošću građana i korisnika tih prostora.
I pored mnoštva mogućih istraživačkih putanja koje su se A(u)kcijom otvorile, tema novog istraživanja se javila nezavisno, i to iz autentičnog prvog utiska gostujućih istraživača o Novom Sadu, a to je utisak panorame grada prilikom prelaska Mosta slobode. Vizura topografije grada na reci posetiocima postaje osnovna geomorfološka prostorna koordinata od koje dalje kreće otključavanje i tumačenje ostatka grada. Ta prva impresija je dovela do saznanja da se mnogi vredni i još uvek neizgrađeni prostori u gradu upravo nižu uz Dunav i čine jedan sistem praznina (voids), zajedno sa rekom kao večitom prazninom. Ta praznina upravo konstituiše osnovni geografski identitet Novog Sada, što je dovelo do stava da i artificijelne urbane mikro-praznine unutar gradskog tkiva možda treba promišljati kao vredne upravo zbog njihove neizgrađenosti, jer komuniciraju nešto od te prirodne konstantne u unutrašnjosti gradskog prostora.
Na taj način se iskristalisala početna hipoteza: da se razvoj urbanosti Novog Sada krije u čuvanju ovih prostora od izgradnje. Usvajanjem takvog stava pomera se fokus ka onim zahvatima koji se tiču, pre svega, dostupnosti odabranih lokacija, povećanja kvaliteta urbanog prostora i ustanovljavanja različitih praksi aktivnog korišćenja ovih prostora od strane građana. Jer, urbanost leži u tim kategorijama, a ne u izgradnji ogoljenih stambeno-poslovnih kapaciteta.
Pa ipak ni takav pristup ne garantuje pravo rešenje za naše praznine, jer ne smemo zaboraviti da je gradska teritorija izuzetno produktivan resurs. Bilo izgrađen ili neizgrađen, bitno je da bude što pravednije iskorišćen i dostupan što raznovrsnijim grupama građana. Stoga smo pristupili kompleksnoj dijagnozi odabranih praznina koje, na primer, tržište samo ne može da postavi, jer se vodi ograničenim pokazateljima – profitom i vlasništvom. Prema tome, ukoliko je izgradnja vrednog gradskog prostora neophodna, treba je pažljivo programirati prema procesima i potrebama celokupnog gradskog metabolizma. Jer kako bi se razumele praznine, neophodno je razumeti prvo grad.
Prema tome, cilj ove publikacije jeste da se promeni percepcija odabranih praznina u gradu, upravo kako bi se dovela u pitanje viđenje tih lokacija kao praznih. A to je najčešći slučaj kada je u pitanju institucionalno bavljenje takvim lokacijama, bilo na fakultetu ili u urbanističkom zavodu. U tom smislu, ponudili smo model istraživačke podloge koja bi takođe mogla dalje da se razvija participativnijim planiranjem tj. učešćem korisnika u okviru postojećih neformalnih režima korišćenja odabranih praznina. Uspostavljanje takve planerske prakse u Novom Sadu tek predstoji.
Izdavač: Centar za nove medije_kuda.org, Novi Sad.
Godina izdanja: 2012.
Autori: Luciano Basauri, Dafne Berc, Aleksandar Bede.
ISBN 978-86-88567-05-3.
COBISS.SR- ID 276070919.
Book Chapters by Aleksandar Bede
Bilingual Serbian/English.
Poglavlje u knjizi/Chapter in book: "Pejzaži potrošačke kulture u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji/Consumer Culture Landscapes in Socialist Yugoslavia". Slobodne veze (Zagreb) & Onomatopee (Eindhoven), 2018.
Urednici/editors: Nataša Bodrožić, Lidija Butković Mićin, Saša Šimpraga.
Radna preprint verzija/Working preprint version. O poduhvatu izdavanja knjige čitajte na: https://pogledaj.to/arhitektura/drustvene-aspiracije-vremena/
English abstract of the originally Serbian chapter>>>
Neoplanta Film was a Yugoslav cinematic production company. It was founded by the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in 1966 in Novi Sad, in order for it to have an official production house like all the other federal units of the country. The kernel of the company was a free cinematic group called Neoplanta, made up of amateurs who, in those years, started to get commissions by public institutions to make documentaries. What followed was a stellar growth in success of the group of directors and the entire company of Neoplanta Film, who quickly managed to re-orient themselves from documentaries about local construction and modernization projects to short and feature films that won many festival awards internationally, like Želimir Žilnik's film "Early Works" that won the Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival in 1969. Dušan Makavejev's cult feature film "WR: Mysteries of the Organism", released in 1971, was swiftly banned by the state censors, even though it gained widespread international acclaim. The communist state's establishment decided to end the creative freedoms of Neoplanta Film and replaced the founding director of the company, Svetozar Udovički, with a trusted apparatchik. Many of the founding creatives left with Udovički, and some even emigrated to the West. Neoplanta Film contiunued with its production with the new management throughout the 1970's and 80's, but it never regained the international fame and reputation of its "golden age". What finally ended the company was the megalomaniac historical partisan-themed film "Great Transport", done as a co-production with American and Italian companies. Neoplanta Film didn't manage to produce the film on time, was sued by the co-producers, and went bankrupt in 1986.
The legacy of the early years of Neoplanta Film has ever since been capturing the interest of the cinephiles and academics globally. Its grass-roots success and individual creativity is recognizes as one of the key nodes in what is today named Yugoslav Neo-Avantgarde movement. The thematic and cinematic approach developed by Neoplanta Film's directors is today seen as a non-institutional socialist alternative to the state and party-socialism. But due to their professional roots in producing documentaries about urban and territorial modernization of Novi Sad and Vojvodina in the 1960's, I suggest that Neoplanta Film could be claimed by the discipline of urbanism as the heritage that belongs to its domain. The movies of Neoplanta Film can be viewed as one of the urban and territorial infrastructural layers, alongside railways, canals, roads, industries and settlements. This could be the infrastructure of societal memory and its history, due to the movies' constitutive role in this space's modernization project. In that way, movies can reveal the narrative and conceptual foundations on which those roads, rails, and canals were built, regardless if they were explicitly documentaries or not. The modernization of the country through infrastructural projects was inseparable from the modernization of the society through cinematic production.
(Tekst je izašao u broju časopisa za kulturu nevladinih organizacija "Most" posvećenom strukovnim udruženjima u Vojvodini. Izdavač: Zavod za kulturu Vojvodine)
Exhibition Publications by Aleksandar Bede
Articles by Aleksandar Bede
Conference Presentations by Aleksandar Bede
The context of this research is the autonomous region of Vojvodina, which was founded as one of the constitutive units of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Apart from this political autonomy, the region is marked by the particular way in which its territory has been artificialized and maintained throughout history – a condition which makes it quite different from the rest of the country (then Yugoslavia, today Serbia). Firstly, this region is a major hydrographic node in Central Europe. The landscape of Vojvodina is defined by the Danube river basin and its tributaries – a flat, fertile and partly swampy alluvial landscape that has always been exposed to the periodic floods and underground waters. In order to make it arable and inhabitable, it had to be meticulously maintained through constant investments in hydro-engineering projects. This has ultimately transformed the region into an artificial agricultural and subsequently industrial landscape with dense network of settlements, where industrial production depended heavily upon the supporting rail and canal network, and where the soil was kept productive only by controlling the drainage of excessive water. The modern-day canals date from the systematic construction of the canal network undertaken by the Habsburg court in the 18th century, but the final and most complex phase of construction has started was undertaking in the socialist Yugoslav times, from 1940’s to 1970’s, resulting in a total of 960km of canal network, out of which 600km were navigable. This was the material precondition that gave rise to all other territorial and urban development in the region, further strengthening it as a coherent network of settlements and industries, contrasting the nearby metropolis.
A particular interest of this paper represents the social component of the projects of territorial modernizations, due to the easily readable links between social and physical projects that are left as marks in the territory. Therefore this paper will offer a model of such a reading by choosing specific projects in the territory that have had a key role in societal narrative in total, and bring them together in one line or a chain of structures of different nature and scale. By lining the different scales and architectural and urban typologies the new possibilities for redefining geographical imaginations emerge, as well as new possibilities for mapping the shown projects and phenomena, which would in return bring new order into the discrepancies between their scales and diversity. We will show, on the chosen case studies of the modernizing projects from the times of Yugoslav socialism, how the narratives of building the socialist society has materialized on site, into structures that have since become physical and spatial carriers of that narrative. The innovation of that social project has resulted in equally innovative architectural and urban typologies that were means of modernization of the urban and regional space in that time. These include new railway infrastructure, urban recompositions, housing, public spaces and places of gathering, etc. This list extends further beyond the physical space, as the projects of territorial modernizations have also had originally unforeseen results in cultural productions, such as the cinematic project of the Neoplanta Film production house, first started off to document the spatial projects on film. Consequently, today these structures are in crisis and danger of neglects and disappearance due to the new economic conditions of transition into capitalism. Namely, they have found themselves without the original societal project which has created them, as well as without a new role in the today's social, political and economical agendas of the state. Thus they have lost their role in the societal narrative, as today's society to longer needs territorial modernizations as its integral part.
The idea of this research is to reverse the process within Neoplanta Film and bring the films of the “author phase” back into the context of space and engineering, where Neoplanta originally comes from, with a hypothesis that pronounces these films as infrastructural network that represents the narrative upon which the rest of this artificial territory is constructed. This is done through the method of terrain investigation and mapping of original set locations of films, which results in a newly emerged infrastructure in the landscape: a network of narratives of great public construction projects, precisely those that are jeopardized today by the process of privatization. The positions against this danger can be strengthened by adding the cinematic cultural layer that was part of the original construction process of these public goods, and by learning about the links between spatial construction and social reproduction that these films talk about.
Talks by Aleksandar Bede
The Architecture of Sibin Djordjević and Milena Stanković Djordjević.
Sibin Djordjević (1926-2013) and Milena Stanković Djordjević (1924-2015) were a couple and architects who belonged to the first post-war generation of students that graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1950. At the time the country was not only in the process of post-war reconstruction, but a whole new socialist society had to be redesigned, including its architecture. This was the context in which Milena and Sibin met, graduated, got married, had a daughter and began their collaboration. They were employed by the state and ended up in Novi Sad in 1953, where they were given chief positions in one of the municipal architectural studios. In the following decade they designed some of the most prominent examples of the international modernist and functionalist architecture in the city. Their design style was influenced by Sibin’s six month fellowship in France in 1954, awarded by the city of Novi Sad, where Siblin was exposed to contemporary French architectural and urban planning. Remarkable structures designed by the couple include the University Campus, Faculty of Agriculture, Town Hall, as well as numerous residential, business, and administrative buildings. Through colleagues in West Germany, Sibin and Milena seized the opportunity to move to Stuttgart in 1963, where they started working and stayed for the rest of their lives. They worked for the state, designing buildings such as colleges, boarding schools, and other public facilities in towns surrounding Stuttgart, well into the 1980’s, until they retired. They remained unknown in Germany due to their public clerk status, which prevented them from having the sole authorship over their designs and favored the public institution as the author. This was in stark contrast to their previous experience in Yugoslavia, where, although having worked for the state as well, they had a certain public figure status, often featured in the local newspapers and interviewed about ongoing construction projects.
Aleksandar Bede, while in fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in autumn 2013, has gone to meet Milena Stanković Djordjević. Her husband Sibin has passed away just shortly before. From the initial conversations with Milena, Aleksandar has developed a 2-year research about the lives and work of her and Sibin. The research included collecting archival materials, visiting project sites, and maintaining communication with Milena, to get her story. This book is the result of that research. It features the catalog of their body of work, both in Yugoslavia and in West Germany. The catalog features Milena’s comments about their life and projects.
The legacy of Sibin and Milena is generated from within the community and for the community. It is in these relationships and stories that architecture of public buildings represents the material infrastructure of the society. The quality of such architecture is the fact that it has become a non-intrusive backdrop, functioning as a radiator of urbanity in its built environment.
The book is bilingual, in Serbian and German.
Saradnja je proizašla iz potrebe da se nastavi istraživački kontinuitet na pitanjima urbanog stanja i razvoja Novog Sada, što je tema kojom smo se bavili 2010. godine u okviru projekta A(u)kcija – registar novosadskih prostora između ličnih interesa i javnih potreba. Dok je cilj tog projekta bilo temeljno dijagnostikovanje svih onih mesta na kojima gradskost Novog Sada kao zajednice škripi, kod "Latentnost u gradu" smo želeli da na odabranoj grupi prostornih problema pokažemo kakav teorijsko-tehnički aparat je neophodno imati kao podlogu za promišljanje budućnosti tih prostora, imajući na umu komplementarnost profesionalnih urbanističkih pristupa (institucionalnih ili ne) sa praticipativnošću građana i korisnika tih prostora.
I pored mnoštva mogućih istraživačkih putanja koje su se A(u)kcijom otvorile, tema novog istraživanja se javila nezavisno, i to iz autentičnog prvog utiska gostujućih istraživača o Novom Sadu, a to je utisak panorame grada prilikom prelaska Mosta slobode. Vizura topografije grada na reci posetiocima postaje osnovna geomorfološka prostorna koordinata od koje dalje kreće otključavanje i tumačenje ostatka grada. Ta prva impresija je dovela do saznanja da se mnogi vredni i još uvek neizgrađeni prostori u gradu upravo nižu uz Dunav i čine jedan sistem praznina (voids), zajedno sa rekom kao večitom prazninom. Ta praznina upravo konstituiše osnovni geografski identitet Novog Sada, što je dovelo do stava da i artificijelne urbane mikro-praznine unutar gradskog tkiva možda treba promišljati kao vredne upravo zbog njihove neizgrađenosti, jer komuniciraju nešto od te prirodne konstantne u unutrašnjosti gradskog prostora.
Na taj način se iskristalisala početna hipoteza: da se razvoj urbanosti Novog Sada krije u čuvanju ovih prostora od izgradnje. Usvajanjem takvog stava pomera se fokus ka onim zahvatima koji se tiču, pre svega, dostupnosti odabranih lokacija, povećanja kvaliteta urbanog prostora i ustanovljavanja različitih praksi aktivnog korišćenja ovih prostora od strane građana. Jer, urbanost leži u tim kategorijama, a ne u izgradnji ogoljenih stambeno-poslovnih kapaciteta.
Pa ipak ni takav pristup ne garantuje pravo rešenje za naše praznine, jer ne smemo zaboraviti da je gradska teritorija izuzetno produktivan resurs. Bilo izgrađen ili neizgrađen, bitno je da bude što pravednije iskorišćen i dostupan što raznovrsnijim grupama građana. Stoga smo pristupili kompleksnoj dijagnozi odabranih praznina koje, na primer, tržište samo ne može da postavi, jer se vodi ograničenim pokazateljima – profitom i vlasništvom. Prema tome, ukoliko je izgradnja vrednog gradskog prostora neophodna, treba je pažljivo programirati prema procesima i potrebama celokupnog gradskog metabolizma. Jer kako bi se razumele praznine, neophodno je razumeti prvo grad.
Prema tome, cilj ove publikacije jeste da se promeni percepcija odabranih praznina u gradu, upravo kako bi se dovela u pitanje viđenje tih lokacija kao praznih. A to je najčešći slučaj kada je u pitanju institucionalno bavljenje takvim lokacijama, bilo na fakultetu ili u urbanističkom zavodu. U tom smislu, ponudili smo model istraživačke podloge koja bi takođe mogla dalje da se razvija participativnijim planiranjem tj. učešćem korisnika u okviru postojećih neformalnih režima korišćenja odabranih praznina. Uspostavljanje takve planerske prakse u Novom Sadu tek predstoji.
Izdavač: Centar za nove medije_kuda.org, Novi Sad.
Godina izdanja: 2012.
Autori: Luciano Basauri, Dafne Berc, Aleksandar Bede.
ISBN 978-86-88567-05-3.
COBISS.SR- ID 276070919.
Bilingual Serbian/English.
Poglavlje u knjizi/Chapter in book: "Pejzaži potrošačke kulture u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji/Consumer Culture Landscapes in Socialist Yugoslavia". Slobodne veze (Zagreb) & Onomatopee (Eindhoven), 2018.
Urednici/editors: Nataša Bodrožić, Lidija Butković Mićin, Saša Šimpraga.
Radna preprint verzija/Working preprint version. O poduhvatu izdavanja knjige čitajte na: https://pogledaj.to/arhitektura/drustvene-aspiracije-vremena/
English abstract of the originally Serbian chapter>>>
Neoplanta Film was a Yugoslav cinematic production company. It was founded by the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in 1966 in Novi Sad, in order for it to have an official production house like all the other federal units of the country. The kernel of the company was a free cinematic group called Neoplanta, made up of amateurs who, in those years, started to get commissions by public institutions to make documentaries. What followed was a stellar growth in success of the group of directors and the entire company of Neoplanta Film, who quickly managed to re-orient themselves from documentaries about local construction and modernization projects to short and feature films that won many festival awards internationally, like Želimir Žilnik's film "Early Works" that won the Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival in 1969. Dušan Makavejev's cult feature film "WR: Mysteries of the Organism", released in 1971, was swiftly banned by the state censors, even though it gained widespread international acclaim. The communist state's establishment decided to end the creative freedoms of Neoplanta Film and replaced the founding director of the company, Svetozar Udovički, with a trusted apparatchik. Many of the founding creatives left with Udovički, and some even emigrated to the West. Neoplanta Film contiunued with its production with the new management throughout the 1970's and 80's, but it never regained the international fame and reputation of its "golden age". What finally ended the company was the megalomaniac historical partisan-themed film "Great Transport", done as a co-production with American and Italian companies. Neoplanta Film didn't manage to produce the film on time, was sued by the co-producers, and went bankrupt in 1986.
The legacy of the early years of Neoplanta Film has ever since been capturing the interest of the cinephiles and academics globally. Its grass-roots success and individual creativity is recognizes as one of the key nodes in what is today named Yugoslav Neo-Avantgarde movement. The thematic and cinematic approach developed by Neoplanta Film's directors is today seen as a non-institutional socialist alternative to the state and party-socialism. But due to their professional roots in producing documentaries about urban and territorial modernization of Novi Sad and Vojvodina in the 1960's, I suggest that Neoplanta Film could be claimed by the discipline of urbanism as the heritage that belongs to its domain. The movies of Neoplanta Film can be viewed as one of the urban and territorial infrastructural layers, alongside railways, canals, roads, industries and settlements. This could be the infrastructure of societal memory and its history, due to the movies' constitutive role in this space's modernization project. In that way, movies can reveal the narrative and conceptual foundations on which those roads, rails, and canals were built, regardless if they were explicitly documentaries or not. The modernization of the country through infrastructural projects was inseparable from the modernization of the society through cinematic production.
(Tekst je izašao u broju časopisa za kulturu nevladinih organizacija "Most" posvećenom strukovnim udruženjima u Vojvodini. Izdavač: Zavod za kulturu Vojvodine)
The context of this research is the autonomous region of Vojvodina, which was founded as one of the constitutive units of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Apart from this political autonomy, the region is marked by the particular way in which its territory has been artificialized and maintained throughout history – a condition which makes it quite different from the rest of the country (then Yugoslavia, today Serbia). Firstly, this region is a major hydrographic node in Central Europe. The landscape of Vojvodina is defined by the Danube river basin and its tributaries – a flat, fertile and partly swampy alluvial landscape that has always been exposed to the periodic floods and underground waters. In order to make it arable and inhabitable, it had to be meticulously maintained through constant investments in hydro-engineering projects. This has ultimately transformed the region into an artificial agricultural and subsequently industrial landscape with dense network of settlements, where industrial production depended heavily upon the supporting rail and canal network, and where the soil was kept productive only by controlling the drainage of excessive water. The modern-day canals date from the systematic construction of the canal network undertaken by the Habsburg court in the 18th century, but the final and most complex phase of construction has started was undertaking in the socialist Yugoslav times, from 1940’s to 1970’s, resulting in a total of 960km of canal network, out of which 600km were navigable. This was the material precondition that gave rise to all other territorial and urban development in the region, further strengthening it as a coherent network of settlements and industries, contrasting the nearby metropolis.
A particular interest of this paper represents the social component of the projects of territorial modernizations, due to the easily readable links between social and physical projects that are left as marks in the territory. Therefore this paper will offer a model of such a reading by choosing specific projects in the territory that have had a key role in societal narrative in total, and bring them together in one line or a chain of structures of different nature and scale. By lining the different scales and architectural and urban typologies the new possibilities for redefining geographical imaginations emerge, as well as new possibilities for mapping the shown projects and phenomena, which would in return bring new order into the discrepancies between their scales and diversity. We will show, on the chosen case studies of the modernizing projects from the times of Yugoslav socialism, how the narratives of building the socialist society has materialized on site, into structures that have since become physical and spatial carriers of that narrative. The innovation of that social project has resulted in equally innovative architectural and urban typologies that were means of modernization of the urban and regional space in that time. These include new railway infrastructure, urban recompositions, housing, public spaces and places of gathering, etc. This list extends further beyond the physical space, as the projects of territorial modernizations have also had originally unforeseen results in cultural productions, such as the cinematic project of the Neoplanta Film production house, first started off to document the spatial projects on film. Consequently, today these structures are in crisis and danger of neglects and disappearance due to the new economic conditions of transition into capitalism. Namely, they have found themselves without the original societal project which has created them, as well as without a new role in the today's social, political and economical agendas of the state. Thus they have lost their role in the societal narrative, as today's society to longer needs territorial modernizations as its integral part.
The idea of this research is to reverse the process within Neoplanta Film and bring the films of the “author phase” back into the context of space and engineering, where Neoplanta originally comes from, with a hypothesis that pronounces these films as infrastructural network that represents the narrative upon which the rest of this artificial territory is constructed. This is done through the method of terrain investigation and mapping of original set locations of films, which results in a newly emerged infrastructure in the landscape: a network of narratives of great public construction projects, precisely those that are jeopardized today by the process of privatization. The positions against this danger can be strengthened by adding the cinematic cultural layer that was part of the original construction process of these public goods, and by learning about the links between spatial construction and social reproduction that these films talk about.