S AM / Basel – AZ / Vienna, until 18.01.2010 

Exhibition at Jasenovac Museum, 2007

With the break-up of the socialist economic system informal tendencies of constructions commenced in the Balkan region. As a result urban structures were radically transformed, which in turn lead to new consequences of urbanization. Examples of the exhibition by AZ W survey the urbanizational present of the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania and came to be the topic of the Architects’ Congress held in Vienna on November 20th-22nd. At the latter event Edi Rama, the mayor of Tirana, Maroje Mrduljaš, chief-editor of ORIS Architects’ Magazine (Zagreb) or Stefan Ghenciulescu, the publisher of Arhitectura (Bucharest) rose to speak besides the curators. The topics of stage talks covered designing within the frames of vacuum and chaos (AL), as well as top chances in the real estate market of Southeast Europe. In the catalogue published as an issue of the journal S AM, Kai Vökler introduced the concepts of „turbo-architecture” and „turbo-urbanism” to be used in criticism, apropos of which he analyses the real-estate business as well as ethnic wars, the bombardments by the NATO, the slowness of restorations as well as the acute housing shortage of the waves of refugees impoverishment.

György Szegő

Sadar Vuga Arhitekti, 1999

Iva Letlovic, MoranaVlahovic: Socail Building, Zagreb, 2003