The Problem of the House in 1960s Belgrade: Mediating the Individual and the Collective

Abstract

Architecture and ambience of the low-rise high-density single-family housing estate Petlovo Brdo in Belgrade, Serbia (1967-69), relate everyday social production of space in socialism as a contemporary vernacular outcome of the notions of the folkloric and the peripheral. Socio-spatial balance between the individual and the communal, pursued by the estate’s architects Elsa and Branislav Milenković, is achieved by variation of seven apartment types in four house types and their diverse grouping in immediate neighbourhoods with pedestrian circulation. Architectural design upholds modular coordination, apartments’ use-value as a function of layout disposition, environmental mindfulness and aesthetic of domesticity and small scale urbanity.