Guest lectures on May 30: About the architectural concept and forms of activity
Guest lectures will be held on May 30, 2023, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., in the Multimedia Hall of the University Sports and Cultural Center of UCG.
Lecture 1
Topic: The Ideal and the Real of the Architectural Concept
Snežana Vesnić PhD, architect
In the visiting lecture entitled “ The Ideal and the Real of the Architectural Concept,” Dr. Snežana Vesnić will speak about the double nature of the production of architectural concepts that she seeks to achieve in positioning concepts between their ideal and real projections. Taking into consideration the conditionality of architecture by the real, the “production” of the architectural concept can be read as a procedure that includes more than just the process of realization, that is, the linear transfer from the sphere of the ideal to the sphere of the real. As an alternative to this approach, the lecture will offer an idea of simultaneous method of idealization and realization, which constitutes the objectivity of the architectural concept through multifarious transformations. The lecture will analyze the method via the design practice of Dr. Snežana Vesnić, deploying a theoretical analysis of the authorial approach to architecture creation, as well as the influence and significance of teaching and pedagogical work in the formation of one’s stand in architecture design.
Lecture 2
Petar Bojanić PhD
Topic: What Is the Projective Mind? Facets and Forms of Architectural Acting
My intention is to privilege the protocols of “project” and “projective design” over other similar regimes and positions of acting or being an architect in general. To begin with, I would like to follow and understand the work of the architect with whom I collaborate, in order to reconstruct the various acts and activities the architect performs: the production of concepts, execution of design acts, production of documents, oversight of construction, architecture writing, preservation of heritage and found objects, association with other architects and collective work (the studio, bureau, office, institution), fantasizing and envisioning the city and its structures, production of new materials, teaching and formation of new architects and maintaining and caring for the discipline of architecture and its autonomy, assessing and evaluating (through committees) new objects, competing and proposing changes in the city and the world, design and amendment of objects and their presentation... Finding a throughline for all these activities and complexities of the figure of the architect, affirming that care and fatigue necessarily imply creativity and production of the new, I would like to insist that project or conject hold this theater of facets and forms of the architect.
CVs of lecturers
Snežana Vesnić, PhD, is an architect and an assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade. She graduated from the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Architecture, and also studied at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Faculty of Applied Arts. Her scientific research involves architectural philosophy and aesthetics, with the focus on the production of “architectural concepts.” She is the author of the book The Architectural Concept: Object of Reality and Subject of Illusion (Akademska knjiga, IDESE 2020). With the philosopher Petar Bojanić, she founded the journal Chorein: Journal for Architecture and Philosophy (2022). Apart from academic work, Vesnić has developed her professional practice through a large number of projects. She is a founding partner of the Belgrade-based architectural studio Neoarhitekti, the projects of which have got recognition by numerous awards and commendations, such as the Annual award of the Union of Architects of Serbia for the Villa Pavlović (2018) and the two nominations for the EU Mies Award (for Villa Pavlović, 2019 and Textil Commercial Building in Užice, 2009). Vesnić is also an author of the winning competition project for the Memorial RTS – ‘Memorial to the RTS Employees Perished during the NATO Bombing’ (Neoarhitekti) from 2013, since when she has intermittently been working on the design development of the memorial and its kinetic structure ‘Sixteen.’ Snežana is the coordinator for national nominations for the EU Mies Award of the Association of Serbian Architects, as well as a member of the Committee for the preparation of the Republic of Serbias performance at the 18th Architecture Biennale in Venice, 2023. She is the author of the video installation The Possibility of "We". Dr. Snežana Vesnić is a member of the international jury for awarding this years European Union Award for Contemporary Architecture - The EUmies Awards Young Talent 2023.
Petar Bojanić PhD
Petar Bojanić is a philosopher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (University of Belgrade) and Director of the Center for Advanced Studies (University of Rijeka). He has taught philosophy of architecture since 2005 at a number of universities and publishes articles and volumes on theory of architecture and the relation between architecture and philosophy. With Snežana Vesnić, he is the co-editor-in-chief of Khōrein: Journal for Architecture and Philosophy. His most recent book is In-Statuere. Figures of Institutional Building, out with Vittorio Klostermann (Frankfurt am Main, 2022).