8th Kilometer

Exhibition authors: Moderni u Beogradu (MuBGD): Iva Bekić, Petar Cigić, Dalia Dukanac, Stefan Đorđević, Irena Gajić, Mirjana Ješić, Hristina Stojanović, Snežana Zlatković

Commissioner: Slobodan Jović

Bord of experts: Ljiljana Miletić Abramović, Aleksandru Vuja, Tanja Damljanović Conley, Predrag Milutinović, Zorica Savičić, Branko Stanojević, Dejan Todorović

Representing Serbia at the Biennale Architettura 2021, MuBGD—a team of eight architects—designed and produced the exhibition under the title The 8th Kilometer. MuBGD team interpreted the theme of the 17th International Venice Architecture Biennale, “How will we live together?” through the life-work relationship which generates forms of collectivity and is manifested as the relation between one city’s production base and its urban structure. The specific subject of the research that forms the main content of the exhibition in the Pavilion of Serbia is Bor, a mining town in East Serbia. Geographically positioned within a non-ferrous metal mining basin, this town was urbanistically and architecturally developed during the post-war industrialization period, thus further upgrading its multicultural character previously developed through the town’s core economic activity—mining.

As the authors of the exhibition noticed, in everyday language the residents of Bor refer to the individual places of the town through a measure of their distance from the Bor open-cast mine, which they take as a starting point, i.e. “kilometer zero.” Furthermore, the inhabitants’ system of orientation is analogous to the methodology of planning and construction of the town itself by way of seven city kilometers. In this sense, the “eighth kilometer” represents a qualitatively new layer of the town, suggesting directions of its further development beyond the mining industry.

The exhibition demonstrates that in the example of the Bor Basin, developed mining production has so far been unambiguously positioned as the sole factor of the town’s existence. By placing this production into global capital flows, the town exhibits the absence of opportunities to improve its social and spatial plans. At the same time, due to the unsustainability of the previously proposed alternatives to its socio-economic development, Bor also represents an opportunity to redefine the life-work relationship and consequently its physical framework. Therefore, the exhibition and research investigate the future of this relationship through the theme of the “eighth kilometer” which introduces disruption into the order of the existing seven urban zones—“kilometers.”

The exhibition includes a spatial simulation of the open-cast mine as a large scale model bordering the town’s seven kilometers, which are metaphorically presented via spatial and graphic simulations. A surface area made from copper tin is formed on the Pavilion’s frontal longitudinal wall, copper being the main product of Bor’s mining industry, thus attracting visitors’ attention to its captivating visual character. A contribution to the authenticity of the exhibition is the origin of the copper sheets used in the production of the exhibition, which are a direct product of the Bor mine whose copper ore was processed in Rolling Mill in Western Serbia. Each of the kilometers is explored through both the archive and design research of a topic specific to the designated area and the town itself. The respective topics are: industry, town planning, cultural spaces, housing standard, everyday life, ecology and demography.

Through collaborative work with an interdisciplinary team of experts and locals, the authors of the exhibition seek to recognize the capacity of architects to provoke a debate about the present and the future of Bor, and possibly other such towns.

The exhibition authors along with the Commissioner will present the exhibition catalogue on August 29 as part of the Midissage events in Serbian Pavilion in Giardini, Venice.

The MuBGD (Moderni u Beogradu / Modern in Belgrade) project brings together a group of eight architects who share a particular interest in architectural illustration. Together, they launched the MuBGD platform in 2018 as a means of promotion, but also critical analysis of Belgrade’s architectural heritage.