Valentin Jeck has been specially commissioned by MoMA to seduce us with massive monochrome images of dereliction. The crescent rooves of his 1979 Poljud Stadium in Split are effortlessly suspended in a mathematical dance between tension and compression.Īlmost all the projects covered in the exhibition are illustrated with contemporary photographs. But we might add to their mix the Croatian name of Boris Magaš. The long-span rooves of Frei Otto and Pier Luigi Nervi are credited with popularising the engineering aesthetic that Santiago Calatrava and other hi-tech architects would eventually render ubiquitous. These are famous names in the history of 20th-century western architecture, and they lend their heft to the process of demystification.Īnd there is compelling evidence to suggest the widespread influence of Yugoslav architects on western design. Perhaps Yugoslav socialism was not quite as unfriendly as Soviet communism? We learn for example that Montenegrin architect Svetlana Kana Radevic studied at the University of Pennsylvania with Louis Kahn that Janko Konstantinov, whose Skopje Telecommunications Centre is positively crustacean, was apprenticed to Alvar Aalto.
#Moma toward a concrete utopia for free
Next to the plans and sections, the labels paint a political system that was perhaps not quite so evil as Uncle Sam tended to make out: “In Yugoslavia, services such as education, health care and cultural programming were available for free to the entire population: this was known as ‘the social standard’.”Įveryone looks at each other confused.
We begin with Tito’s drive for modernisation and projects that vary from Macedonian opera houses to Serbian TV towers. Only once these two aims are achieved can they pose the salient question: does Yugoslav architecture merit more study than a social media scroll? Simultaneously, they are obliged to titillate concrete-loving Instagrammers with images of Brutalist hulks. It falls to the curators then to differentiate the USSR from Yugoslavia, and they are not off to a good start. The North American layman tends to consider the Eastern bloc as a homogenous chunk of misery.
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