Revitalization proposals for the art Sculpture foundry

Abstract

Over the past few decades Belgrade’s urban development has been infringing upon the historic fabric of the city, especially upon its peripheral areas created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In order to counteract this process and demonstrate greater commitment to the concept of sustainable development, it is necessary to redefine, through planning policies and through protecting historic areas with relatively modest residential and industrial architecture, the attitude towards the following: what in a historic area is worthy of being preserved; what is meant by the continuity of tradition; the preservation of identity and authenticity of distinctive urban environments and complexes testifying to the life of the city’s lower classes, craftsmen, small manufactory and factory workers, and to their working environments themselves. The wish to sensitize future architects to this distinctive type of built heritage as an important part of the city’s urban and architectural memory and to encourage them to reassess the prevailing attitude towards it was the motivation behind the idea to assign them the task to look critically at the importance that the Sculpture Foundry may have for our times, through the study of archival materials and architecture, and to think of the ways in which it may be revitalized so that it should fit into the changed urban and architectural context around it. Students’ projects filled the foundry complex with many new functions with a view to improving its historical, cultural, artistic and technological significance. Their proposals for new cultural, artistic and multimedia uses express the wish to preserve this old structure and to breathe new life into it by attracting new, especially young users, who would be given an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the historical development of this type of industrial architecture through a presentation of old technological processes and art objects created there, but also to create their own works, which would preserve the continuity of the purpose of the place and give it vitality for the future.