This year, the 17th edition of the Belgrade International Architecture Week – BINA 2022 will be held from 26 May to 7 July.
The focus of the event will be on the presentation of current competitions for the City of Belgrade (2021/2022) and the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award (2022), at representative exhibitions in the Art Gallery of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade. With its interactive approach, BINA will bring to public attention current events on the architectural scene, which will influence the physiognomy and the future of life and appearance of cities in the country and worldwide. Among other activities that will accompany the exhibition programmes, there will be walks, workshops, discussions, lectures by the authors of award-winning designs, and more.
BINA 2022 will be opened on 26 May with the exhibition “Awards and Competitions 2021-2022”, which will last until 12 June 2022. This exhibition will present award-winning designs selected at seven recent architectural competitions for the City of Belgrade, organized by the Union of Architects of Serbia (UAS) and the Association of Belgrade Architects (DAB). The audience will have the opportunity to get acquainted with the architectural and urban design proposals that were awarded the first three prizes by the expert jury.
The exhibition will feature competitions for: part of the block between Kralja Milana, Svetozara Markovića, Nemanjina and Kralja Milutina streets in Belgrade; construction/extension of the existing depot of the National Library of Serbia; the pavilion of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade; creative-innovative multifunctional centre “Ložionica”, Mostar loop, Belgrade; Metro station Line 1 (phase 1) of the Belgrade metro; new building of the Faculty of Music, and the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade.
The architects have shown innovative approaches, starting with the concept of polyvalent housing, which introduces freedom and easy transformation of housing into a number of different scenarios of daily life, to traditional-modern metro stations through which we will move in future as through museum space, and innovative and bold designs for cultural and arts facilities that prioritize environmental and energy efficiency, as well as harmonization with the topography and the existing architectural environment. As many as two art faculties will get their new home in buildings designed according to state-of-the-art standards, through well-thought-out multifunctionality and specific requirements of musical and artistic expression.
The exhibition will be accompanied by lectures and walks with the authors, who will introduce us to their ideas, both at the exhibitions and the specific locations.
The exhibition “European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture 2022 – Mies van der Rohe Award”, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, curated by Ivan Blasi, will last from 16 June to 7 July 2022. The European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award is granted every two years in order to acknowledge and reward high-quality architectural production in Europe, and draw attention to the major contribution by European professionals to the development of new ideas and construction technologies.
The Award aims to foster architecture in two significant ways: by stimulating greater circulation of professional architects across European Union, and by supporting young architects early in their careers. The jury selects two winners: one who receives the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in recognition of its conceptual, technical, and constructional qualities, and the other who receives the Emerging Architect prize at the beginning of the career. Candidates for the Award are nominated by a broad group of independent experts from all over Europe, as well as from associations of architects that are part of the Architects’ Council of Europe and other European national associations of architects. Commissioner for this year’s Serbian selection of the European Award was Prof. Snežana Vesnić, on behalf of the Union of Architects of Serbia (UAS).
All 532 nominated works from 41 countries will be shown in digital format at the exhibition in Belgrade. Special emphasis will be on 40 shortlisted works, as well as two award-winning designs. A special segment of the exhibition will be a presentation of Serbian selections that have regularly participated in the nomination for this prestigious award since 2009.
The final decision on the awards for 2022 will be made in April this year, and the award ceremony will take place in May in Barcelona, so the exhibition in June during BINA 2022 will be one of the first opportunities to present the winners of this prestigious award to European audiences.
BINA has co-organized the exhibition dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Dobrović, our great architect. On this occasion, a large retrospective exhibition will be opened on 17 May at the SASA Gallery. In cooperation with the Faculty of Architecture, a student competition was organized on the theme of reconstruction of the General Staff building. Students’ competition works will be displayed at an open-air exhibition in Knez Mihailova Street, on 27 May.
This year, the exhibition programme is also extensive and presents contemporary production from the country and the region. The exhibition Bring your own design traditionally presents young architects at the beginning of their careers, this time Modelart Architects from Novi Sad. The Piranesi Award exhibition is a review of recent architecture from the region, which has included in recent years a large number of the best student works. The focus of the international exhibition Housing 21 is on the theme of housing that is always current. As in previous years, BINA will organize, in cooperation with the partners of the EU Višegrad Fund project, a workshop called “Joint planning of Block 37”.
Special segment of the programme is the GOOD URBAN LIFE 2, which was developed after last year’s successful roundtable at the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, in which participants with different professions and interests discussed what a good urban life is, and how they contribute to it through their actions. This year, GOOD URBAN LIFE will also take place in the streets, both with partners with whom we started the discussion and with the new ones who joined it. The plan is to implement interactive modules at several locations in Belgrade, each with a specific topic of importance for the quality of life in the urban environment. There are five topics that BINA will address: health, care, food, play, and the digital environment. Students at the Belgrade Faculty of Architecture and the Vienna University of Technology will do their best at a joint workshop to contribute to the good urban life of Belgrade.
Like every year, BINA walks are an important part of the programme: the plan is to follow the traces of Nikola Dobrović’s thought and work, to get to know better the parts of the city that were the subject of competitions, while the architects will explain the planned interventions. New city routes will be discovered by following the graffiti trails, some special places that exude care for people and make city life nicer and better. Together with participants of the walk, BINA will search for nature in the city and learn with them what urban mobility means. This year, after Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Pančevo and Kragujevac, BINA is taking architecture lovers to Šabac.
