BLOCK 39 Masterplan

Ted Sandstra: Ambitious Plans for a New Belgrade

In: 2011 COMPETITIONS Annual.
G. Stanley Collyer (ed.) with contributions by William Morgan, Ted Sandstra, and Eric Goldemberg
Louisville: The Competition Project, Inc., 2012.

Background

In the process of reinventing itself, the Serbian capital Belgrade, once the political center of Yugoslavia before its dissolution into a number of smaller nation states, is steering away from its obsession with its nationalist past, and, with its application for entry into the European Community, is promoting cultural as well as economic progress as its top priorities. As part of this new direction the City staged recent competitions for two citiy projects, bringing attention to the needs of Belgrade as a large city that not only continues to grow, but is soliciting ideas that speak to a civic and national identity that is intended to redefine significant historical locales within its geography. Thus, in the tradition of the Grande Projects, the Serbian administration announced competitions for a Center for the Promotion of Science; and also the Hala Beton Waterfront Centre 2011 and Kalemegdan Park on the Danube, the former located in Block 39 of the New Belgrade plan, the latter located just across the Sava River from it. 
New Belgrade was originally designed in the 1950s as the connective tissue between two cities – Belgrade to the east and Zemun to the west. Belgrade was the furthest point west of the Ottoman Empire while Zemun represented the Austrian-Hungarian empire to the west. By finding a way to bind these two cities with a new, modern housing district, Tito’s regime intended to indicate a direction forward for a nascent nation. 
Why the city regarded a new Centre for the Promotion of Science, as one of its top priorities for an international competition, is clear from the competition brief:

“Science Centers inspire curiosity and support learning about science from early ages. In the area of knowledge-based societies a modern science centre can play a central role in dissemination of scientific culture and the strengthening of research, not only for young generations, but also for adults.”
There can be little doubt that an eye-catching design was what the city was after, and the winning design by the Austrian architect, Wolfgang Tschapeller, certainly fulfilled that requirement.

The Centre for the Promotion of Science
First Prize
Wolfgang Tschapeller ZT GmbH Architekten
Vienna, Austria

By locating the program above the street with remarkable structural simplicity and clarity, one can surmise that this approach caught the attention of the jury over other, less successful attempts to reach for height and visibility in an urban landscape dedicated to the automobile. Elevating the program also frees up space for the development of additional amenities for pedestrians at street level. Raising the exhibition area above the ground plane, according to the author, follows the principles of the Athens Charter as set out by CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture). This ties the design to the history of the site, which was conceived at a time when the Athens Charter held sway over urban planning. The competition brief stated:

“At that time, futuristic urban planning was carried out, with a clear orthogonal street system, wide boulevards, fast traffic, open and half open blocks with macro and micro ambiences and appropriate following content, green zones and good environmental qualities.”

Once one ascends up to the main level, the remainder of the design possesses a functional and very restrained distribution of the program. The shell of the building clearly delineates the architecture’s internal features: the hemispherical planetarium, tubes describing vertical circulation, raked seating for the auditorium and a large, unbroken box for a highly flexible exhibition space. This rational utilization of space is consistent throughout the structural solution as the author outlines the use of void forms in the concrete slab to reduce deadweight. Although there is a reward in the ever-improving view over New Belgrade as the visitor ascends the ramps and moves into the underside of this spaceship, the unsheltered vertical circulation path would seem to demand some endurance of the user in inclement weather. Perhaps some enclosure (similar to the Pompidou?) will be developed in order to protect visitors from the winter wind.
The criteria for the jury’s evaluation of the winner are clear from its concluding statement:

“Yet even as the building’s form appears radical, the construction is simple, straightforward, well-considered and well-calculated. The Jury has come to the conclusion that this project precisely fits both the requirements, and aspirations, for the proposed institution, as well as for the city in which it will provide a new, welcome landmark.”