4.154 COLLECTIVE Option Studio, SP23

Collaborators: Chris Allen, Sloan Aulgur, Ekin Bilal, Mara Diavolova, Lauren Gideonse, Susan Williams, Ina Wu
MIT SA+P, Instructor: Ana Miljački

Project Brief: 
Repair and Replay of Belgrade’s Collective Housing

This studio inherits the legacy of the “right to housing” which was put forward by the first Yugoslav Forum on Housing and Construction in 1956: “The right to housing is a basic legal institution, providing one of the most important means of life to the working classes.” In a self-managed society, housing was a social responsibility, and land too was socially (not state) “owned.” However, since the 1990s campaign to privatize all housing in Yugoslavia, there has been no clear provision in the context for any form of affordable or social housing. 

New construction on the unregulated outskirts of Belgrade, as well as the construction of extensions and adaptations of the modernist and other housing stock were symptomatic of the great need as well as of the only economically viable model for construction, or for procuring housing.

In the context of a housing shortage and learning from contemporary grass roots movements committed to collective housing in the 2020s Belgrade we offer a set of alternatives that revive, or fast forward some key lessons of socialist housing. Their mandate will be to serve as discursive props, as critical commentary and as real options, both in the context of Belgrade and beyond.