Nadogradnje – Urban Self-Regulation in Post-Yugoslav Cities

After the territorial division of former Yugoslavia, the political and social turns as well as a rapid transformation from a socialist planned economy into a neoliberal market economy and high pressure of urban development met weak public institutions which had not yet adapted to the post-socialist and post-war order. New urban and architectural orders of varying scale bear witness to this development and are firmly rooted in the cityscape, both visually and structurally. One of the side-efffects of this to a large extent deregulated situation was the informalisation of public space. As a consequence of privatisation of municipal residential buildings, for example, many of these buildings were extended with 1 to 3 storeys.

The photographic work of Gregor Theune shows examples of this type of urban self-regulation in post-Yugoslav cities and raises questions about the urban system with all of its local actors and dependencies.

With Gregor Theunes photographs as a visual starting point, Nadogradnje brings together a pictorial approach to urban landscapes and scientific positions by international authors of various disciplinary backgrounds in order to open a wide field of discourse on the Balkan‘s informal architecture.