New Belgrade's Cultural Spine: Revitalization of the spaces lost to the Highway E75

The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Stockholm, Sweden

Project idea

"New Belgrade’s Cultural Spine: Revitalization of the spaces lost to the Highway E75" is a Masterplan project that has a healing aspect to the city fabric and public life. Belgrade is a city located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers which divide the city into three parts. Still, besides this division, there is also a Highway that has a disruptive effect on the city fabric.

How do the communities surrounding the highway interact with it? How they can use the space which now is not possible? The project is about communities and heritage adjacent to the highway. How to provide access to it?

Focusing on New Belgrade’s Central Zone, this project provides the model that is an alternative to the model of big developments, instead of covering up empty sites, it is trying to rethink their function and create a cultural spine that is desperately forgotten in this part of the city.

Project description

My proposal can be divided into three parts: cultural interventions, infrastructural interventions and a programmatic toolbox.

Cultural interventions are the primary interventions of this project and directly depend on the block in which they are located. These are cultural buildings or physical spaces where culture is created. These objects that I am introducing are alien to the site, but also indigenous by drawing on certain languages and patterns that I have read from the local context. Also, they were influenced by the view from the highway, since it is still going to be a very busy road, viewing the building from that angle was something I was guided by when designing them. Programs are set, but they are also open for locals to define them in their own way.

Infrastructural interventions connect the space between the proposed cultural facilities with the already existing traffic infrastructure. Walking and cycling lanes are carefully implemented in the existing sanitary protective layer of blocks considering existing vegetation, so the trees separate walking and cycling traffic and create green patches. Also, opposite blocks are connected with a number of new bridges that are exclusive to walking and cycling traffic, allowing more connections between the communities from different blocks.

Programmatic toolbox maximizes forgotten relationship with the area next to a highway by implanting new cultural, and recreational activities but also adventure programs to try to enhance and empower the potential of this area. They are scattered across the cultural spine and enrich the space between cultural interventions, leaving no empty space on this long line. For example, we have normal and electrical bicycle stations, event platforms, musical parks, book sharing stations, chess tables, bird feeders, location markers etc.

Technical information

"New Belgrade’s Cultural Spine" consists of:

- Cultural interventions:
Museum of Modernistic Architecture and Design
New Belgrade's Student Theatre
Artists' Workshops
Open Auditorium
Multipurpose Square
Park Extension
Circular Gallery

- Infrastructural interventions:
Walking paths
Bicycle paths
Green patches
Bridges crossing the highway...

- Programmatic toolbox:
Event platforms
Park Maps
Musical parks
Book sharing stations
Chess tables
Bird feeders
Location markers
Recycling bins
Insect hotels
Reclined benches...