Architecture–Infrastructure–Landscape assimilation in the post-industrial development of Danube waterfront in Belgrade: research-by-design approaches [BAB 2023]

Abstract

This paper presents the research of the typological frameworks loss between architecture, infrastructure and landscape in research-by-design results in a decade of work on the Master's final thesis and projects with the topic Making of a City: postindustrial development of the area between Dunavska Street and the Belgrade’s Danube waterfront, under the mentorship of professor Nebojša Fotirić, with assistant Dr Bojana Jerković-Babović. Phenomena such as globalization, hyperproduction of information, virtual interactions, etc., lead to specific social and cultural fragmentation within the framework of fluid exchange networks on a global and local level. The new relations between the local and the global are manifested by the separation between the symbolic meaning of the location, function and new forms of appropriation of space. Accordingly, the research questions in the context of the post-industrial phase of Belgrade’s Danube Waterfront include the understanding of modern, hybrid programming settings and new models of spatial use. Such approaches, considering the needs of the contemporary aesthetic experience of the city, modernize architectural programs and transform typologies in inherited contexts. In this paper, out of 80 projects, 10 projects from the previous 10 generations were selected, which meet the criteria of (1) realizing the continuity of urban movement that connects architecture, infrastructure and landscape, (2) forming a dynamic perceptual experience in motion and (3) erasing clear boundaries between the interior and exterior. New urban landscapes are created, in which clear boundaries between architecture, infrastructure and natural landscape are lost in the conventional typological sense. This paper aims to show and expand the operational scope of architectural creativity, through results that actualize and operationalize the aforementioned changes in architectural thought and practice.