Yugoslav utopia of sustainable city—the synthesis of living environment and social order

Abstract

Following the breakup with the Soviet model of socialism in 1948, the search for an authentic Yugoslav path offered a novel politico-cultural agenda that was promoted, among other, via new humane architecture and urban forms. In the early 1960s, utopian concepts have been developed all around the world under the influence of brutalism, structuralism, English avant-garde, as well as the Japanese architecture that delivered a large number of utopian projects within the concept of metabolism. Instead of static architectural and urbanistic compositions, these projects were based on the kinematic idea of generative, uniquely structured urban forms that are flexible and adaptable to future development of the city. Yugoslav architects Vjenceslav Richter, Andrija Mutnjaković, and Radovan Delalle accepted the ideas of Western avant-garde and offered unique sustainable urban models that were based on an integral organic planning in the socialist society. This paper addressed the Yugoslav perception of sustainable structures of future cities taking into account the prerequisites and potentials of shaping the mega-structural architectural volumes that were based on the values of socialist self-management system. Aspiring to transform the self-management concept into a real and palpable political function of living space, Richter focused on the problem of synthesis. His central thesis of ‘Sinturbanism’ was based on systematic approach to urban planning. On the other hand, Mutnjaković’s urbanistic model ‘Biourbanism’ promoted the ideas of naturality and open and spontaneous growth, which he extracted from biological principles. His ideal was for the society to reach dynamic homeostasis as seen in the intact nature. The idea of continual growth was also present in the model ‘Urbarchitecture’ of Radovan Delalle. He presented urban structure as an aggregate of relations between all elements of that structure within a specific social-economic milieu. This paper starts from the premise that the ideas of sustainable city in utopian projects reflected an original ideological agenda of Yugoslav socialism which was based on the values of international and Marxist humanism. The establishment of humane principles and the overcoming of alienation through the synthesis of living environment was the priority because of the need for harmonic relationships between an individual and the society which is focused on the human as an integral biological and social being.