Barbara Costantino: [] Architecture and Urban Planning - Centre of promotion of Science of Repubblic of Serbia

Architectural collaboration at Fernando Donis

Project: International Competition for The Centre of promotion of Science of Repubblic of Serbia in New Belgrade.

Location: Belgrade, Serbia

Subject: Architecture - urban planning

Design period: November 2010

Typology: idea competition

Responsability: team member

Novi Beograd - built on 1947 on the left banck of Sava river which was previously uninhabited area opposite of the Old city of Belgrade.

General urban concept for the Block 39

Reinventing the isolated linearity of modernism into congestion, the coexistence of the proposed four ‘bars’ of the different centers and faculties, would generate an organized and flexible campus able to grow up to 150,000 m2. The Center of Promotion of Science (ca.10,000 m2) is proposed at the eastern site, with the Science Institute at its west – a ‘mirror’ image of the former. Five additional modules of 25,780 m2 allocate the Supercomputer, Nano, and Material Center to the south of the Science Institute. In a similar way, at the south of the Center for Promotion of Science, the Faculty of the same name is placed. Electrical engineering and Physics neighbor each other at the west of the site; and the Faculty of Art complements the Faculty of Drama at its south, as required. These parallel buildings are intersected by two perpendicular spines: at the third –public- level of the faculties and at ground floor connecting to both the Center of Promotion and the Science Institute.

Gravitation is the natural phenomenon for which objects attract each other, granting weight and causing them to fall to the ground. This principle describes the concept for this project at the campus level: the scheme ‘attracts’, densifies the site with elongated modular grounded bars, ‘gravitating’ between the diverse schools of the campus. Specifically at the level of the Centre for Promotion of Science the building defies gravity, conceived as a linear functional, single-level slab ‘floating’ on top of the existing and future trees, fully respecting nature, and reconsidering the ‘geometric property of –urban- spacetime’, its Relativity.

New Belgrade_project area Block39