Tag Archive for: Belgrade

Forming of the New Cemetery at the end of 1820s at the far outskirts of Belgrade, next to the Tašmajdan quarry, was part of a policy of space conquest at several levels: political – by emancipation from the Turkish political authority; cultural – by restoring the concept of positioning the cemetery next to the church; urban – by expanding the city territory to the cemetery and organizing urban space by forming of streets and residential buildings; communal – by routing and infrastructural development of roads and open market places; economic – by constructing bazaars and new business centres. Such a transformation of the area around the cemetery enriched the contents and functions of this part of the town, although it remained less attractive than neighbouring Vračar, until the Principality of Serbia acquired independence. By changing the cultural patterns of Belgrade’s middle class, the culture surrounding death also changed during the 19th century, along with the attitude towards cemeteries and its functions. After the closure of the Large Cemetery, the area was levelled and used for formation of new streets, without transferring the graves or remains of the deceased to an ossuary or to the New Cemetery. The New Cemetery, in turn, was neglected, unmaintained, had no fence nor guards and was often desecrated. However, when cultural norms changed in the second half of the 19th century, such an appearance of cemetery became inappropriate, requiring better maintenance or relocation to the outskirts. This time, remains of the deceased family members were either transferred with piety or new ossuaries were formed.

As noted by Walter Benjamin, the spatial phenomenon of a covered glass-roofed passage, stretched between two streets and inserted inside a city block, encapsulated the extreme cultural ambivalence: by expressing repression through the ideology of consumerism and expressing freedom through the utopia of abundance. The hidden emancipatory potentials of the city passages, observed closely in a particular case, represent the subject of this paper and the analytical probe that examines the historical conditions of a particular enterprise. When the Passage of Nikola Spasić was constructed in the main pedestrian and shopping street of Belgrade in 1912, the époque of Parisian-style arcades had already passed. Observed in this broader perspective, the construction of the Passage, according to the project of Nikola Nestorović, one of the most prominent Serbian architects of the period, was only a late echo of the Parisian 18th century invention. The comparison and contention between the three chosen, realized and unrealized, transpositions of the Passage in Belgrade, designed by different prime architects of the time, in relation to Benjamin’s idea of space with emancipative potential, correspondingly point out the protean capacity and open up new alternatives in the context of contemporary production of space, particularly important in the light of a changing global culture.

Role of the army in the development of Belgrade was not directly but rather indirectly linked to the development of urban and regulatory planning. Namely, the cartographic work of army-hired officers and experts represents an important legacy in the urban planning history. In addition to this role, military skills were greatly appreciated in the first institutions that regulated the construction and architectural projects in Serbia. Military barracks in Belgrade from the time of Prince Miloš served as inspiration for the construction of other public buildings. Military facilities, which were not separated from buildings for civilian use, had been built in the vicinity of the Great Barrack. There was no plan for creating a separate military district but the idea was to have military facilities located close to each other, so as to ensure efficient functioning of the army. Therefore, the locations chosen for certain military facilities had not always been optimal solutions when it came to their function and meaning. Many of them were built as representative buildings in order to emphasize the important role of the Serbian army in the realization of the objectives of national policy. After gaining independence in 1878, military facilities progressively occupied the surroundings of Belgrade in addition to the central parts of the city. On the one hand, this came as a result of the development of Belgrade and the new needs of its residents, and also due to the growing army and its subsequently increased demands for modern training which needed to be conducted in a free and uninhabited area. These challenges were resolved spontaneously, leading to solutions that failed to fulfil all military requirements and needs which were also at the expense of the needs of the municipality of Belgrade.