@article{
author = "Ignjatović, Aleksandar and Stojiljković, Danica Milan",
year = "2024",
abstract = "This article examines relationships between architecture and ideology in socialist
Yugoslavia by exploring the cultural interpretation and appropriation of the Balkan
house in achieving modern, specifically Yugoslav architectural expression. Through the
contextualization of the period’s different narratives on the Ottoman vernacular and
various architectural designs related to it, the aim is to demonstrate how Yugoslav architects relied on Marxism to appropriate vernacular architecture into the modernist discourses. Dialectical materialism was used as a key for the interpretation of the
opposition between what was seen as the negative and positive elements of the
Balkan house, which challenged banal polarization between the traditional and modern
and led to a more nuanced understanding of backwardness and progress in vernacular
architecture. The idea of architectural metamorphoses of vernacular to modern
forms was justified by evolution and revolution, the basic concepts of the Marxist understanding of processes in society and culture. The Yugoslav interest in the Balkan house
represented a living, perceivable example of how the relationships between tradition and
modernity, the past and the present, as well as men and their environment, became
incorporated into new architecture of ‘socialism with a humane face’, which stood at
the heart of Yugoslav social and political experiment.",
publisher = "SAGE Publications",
journal = "Journal of Contemporary History",
title = "Practicing Dialectical Materialism: The Balkan House and Architecture in Socialist Yugoslavia",
volume = "59",
number = "1",
pages = "161-184",
doi = "10.1177/00220094231209223"
}