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Architectural Terri(s)tories: Jajinci Memorial Park in Belgrade

Article  in  AM Journal of Art and Media Studies · April 2017

DOI: 10.25038/am.v0i12.169

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Nataša Janković*
Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Architectural Terri(s)tories:
Jajinci Memorial Park in Belgrade

Abstract: Architecture represents one of the possible ways of how territory can be
marked, but it is also a permanent trace of the process of its development. As a built form it is
a sign in the ground, while as an idea it represents a trace of various approaches to its develop-
ment within a theoretical field. This paper examines the significance and meaning of a single
architectural gesture within the context of an architectural narrative of the city territory by
starting from the structural approach to observation of the territory (Gregotti) and the meth-
od of post-structuralist analysis.
This study links and analyses: 1) the importance of the architectural gesture in the pro-
cess of defining and developing the territory of the city, through 2) changing position from
the phenomenological (formal, formative) to topographic discourse of observing architecture,
which examines 3) the potential of the interpretative narrative both of the architecture and
the territory. Memorial park Jajinci was selected as a case study whose primary purpose is to
relate messages about the significance and meaning of the place where it is located. The aim
of this kind of analysis of the interpretive potential of this example is to show the importance
of the elements of the territory as a witness of the processes of development based on spatial
narratives ‘written down’ in the city territory.

Keywords: architectural narratives, territory, memorial park, Jajinci, Belgrade

Structurality of the Territory

The city is considered as a whole, its past and present are revealed by its own
physical structure.1
The territory is a historical category. It is made, changeable and inconsistent.2
The territory also represents a geographic category, not only because it is a way of
1
Entoni Vidler, “Treća tipologija,” in: Petar Bojanić and Vladan Đokić, ed., Teorija arhitekture i urbanizma,
(Beograd: Univerzitet u Beogradu, Arhitektonski fakultet, 2009), 325–31.
2
More about this in: Stuart Elden, The Birth of Territory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); Stuart
Elden, “Thinking territory historically,” Geopolitics 15, 4 (2010): 757–61; Stuart Elden, “The Significance of
Territory,” Geografica Helvetica 68, 1 (2013): 65–68; Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden, “Henri Lefebvre on State,
Space, Territory,” International Political Sociology 3, 4 (2009): 353–77.

* Author contact information: natasha.jankovic@gmail.com

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 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

forming and controlling the environment, but because there are disparities even in its
origination and development.3 The territory is a concept and practice where the rela-
tionship between these discourses (historical and geographical) may be viewed only
by a generic approach. It is a political issue, but also historical, geographical, strategic,
cultural and technical, and must be defined through its historical, geographical and
conceptual specificity. Elements that make up its structure,4 whose configuration and
composition5 create a (dis)harmony between the natural and the social6 within the
whole entity, are very important. Territory as a social construct is formed through
the establishment of relations between the natural and social, where territoriality is
an important element of the way the human associations – culture and society – form
its physical structure. The way in which a certain culture ‘produces’ territory is the
process of its creation or “re-production”7, where the elements can be regarded as
communication codes within the architectural narratives about the city (terri(S)tory).8
3
Stuart Elden, “Land, terrain, territory,” Progress in Human Geography 34, 6 (2010): 799–817.
4
The term structure as a noun had been used during the mid-fifteenth century to denote “an act or processes
obuilding or construction”, while at the beginning of the seventeenth century was used for marking of “what
has been built, the building or structure”. It originates from the Latin structura, “to fit together, to adapt; facility
or method of construction”; or its figurative (picturesque) meaning “method of classification (arrangement),
consistency”, from structus, the past participle of struere, “pile on, set together, build, assemble, organize and
make through combination”; corellated with strues, “multiplicity, assemble”, from *stere, that what is “expand-
ed, extended and stretched”. The continuation of these ancient roots and ways of thinking can be found in the
Greek stronymi, “to cover, (to) strew”, in Latin sternere, „to stretch, (to) extend”, in old Slavonic stira, streti,
“spreading”, strama „district”, and in Russian stroji “order”, in old German strouwen, and also in old English
streowian, “to sprinkle ((to) disperse), (to) scatter”. structure (n.). Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed No-
vember 26, 2016, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/structure
Conceptually, defining the structure points to its manifestation and procedural character. The definition of
the term ranges from labeling one element through a description of the process during which the emphasis is
relocated from an independent element to the relation, or connections, that are formed between the elements
(integration, customization, assembly, organization, combination), until that “complex, assemble” arises out of
the operations, such as “spreading” or “expansion” forms a specific “territory” within which there is an “order”.
As a verb structure carries the meaning of “putting the system together”, occasionally used by the end of the
sixteenth century, and often used from the end of the nineteenth century, emerging from the noun structure. In
addition to marking the entity that occurs, this shows the importance of the way in which the unity is defined.
structure (v.). Dictionary.com Unabriged, accessed November 26, 2016, http://dictionary.reference.com/
browse/structure
5
Configuration and composition of the territory for the purposes of this study are seen as two conceptual
phenomena, whereby the configuration primarily refers to the physical aspects, or elements that make up the
structure, while in the context of composition the focus is on the metaphorical aspects of observing the struc-
ture of the territory, which are conditioned by relations between the elements within the continuity.
6
More in: Jean Gottmann, The Significance of Territory (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015); Robert
David Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
7
David Delaney, Territory: a short introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008).
8
The article titled Terristories in the thematic issue of the architectural magazine OASE offers an interdisciplinary
approach to the study of the territory, combining architectural and literary techniques (Havik, Veldhuis, 2009). This
issue, starting from the premise that the contemporary urban territory constantly transforms, requiring new prin-
ciples and approaches that take into account the different spatial and temporal scales through the display of critical
thinking in the current architectural discourse on the territory, offers valuable new insights and approaches to ar-
chitectural and urban design. Havik Klaske, Sebastiaan Veldhuisen, “Terristories,” OASE: On Territories 80 (2009):
70–77.

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For the field of architecture, considering the concept of territory is under the
strong influence of Vitorio Gregotti, whose affinity for critical theory (especially phe-
nomenological, structuralistic and anthropological models) is evident in the way he
develops arguments for deeper engagement in what he calls creating of an antropo-ge-
ografical environment through architectural intervention.9 Gregotti emphasizes the
structural aspect of the territory, more precisely that each element is a part of the whole
unity, but also that it can be dismantled into smaller parts. Gregotti, for all those parts,
regardless of their size, emphasizes that they are made up of traces of their past, where
architectural gesture in such a mode of observation of the territory has the task of
drawing attention to the substance of the context of the territory by transforming
its forms.10 In order to determine the “form of discourse” of Gregotti’s concept of
territory, Lucking has concluded that its methodology of critical theory, hermeneutic
phenomenology and socio-anthropological structuralism can be used effectively for
networking meanings (cultural, historical, etc.) of the individual elements of the ter-
ritory, which do not make it (territory) as such only in its appearance but also in what
it is structurally.11 The set of principles that Vitorio Gregotti proposed to the architec-
tural profession are a tool for creating and maintaining the interdependence of culture
and nature, while an architectural gesture,12 regardless of its own finitude, makes an
important point within the continuous flow of urban development and represents a
spatial dimension of its history.13 Seen in this way architectural gesture has the role of
a witness to historical events; in other words it makes an architectural narrative about
the process of development of the city territory.
Vitorio Gregoti, as a representative of Italian neo-rationalism, like Aldo Ros-
si, who was a central figure of this movement in Italy and who based his approach
on universal and constant morphological analogies with the purpose of relocation

9
Vitorio Gregotti, “The Form of the Territory,” OASE: On Territories (2009): 7–22; Vitorio Gregotti, “Territory
and Architecture,” in Kate Nesbitt, ed., Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural
Theory 1965–1995 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), 338–44.
10
Ibid.
11
Maura Lucking, “The Form of the Discourse: A Contextual Hermeneutic of Vittorio Gregotti’s ‘Territory’,”
presented at Belonging: Cultural Topographies of Identity, Dublin, University College Dublin, 2012, accessed
March 15, 2017, https://www.scribd.com/doc/310404588/The-Form-of-the-Discourse-A-Contextual-Herme-
neutic-of-Vittorio-Gregotti-s-Territory-Maura-Lucking-Academia-pdf
12
Considered in this way, architecture can be seen as a gesture of territorialisation, or physical and mental
formation of a specific territory. The same qualities that characterize a gesture in the form of text should be
characterized by a gesture in the form of spatial expression, and from that reason is also significant to indicate
the basic characteristics that Bojanić and Đokić explain on the basis of how Ludwig Wittgenstein defined ar-
chitecture, citing its five basic features: a miracle (what breaks the string and viability); event (surprise, break,
self-thematization); reformatting and moving against the auto-frenzy; pronounced thought or emotion; not
recognizing the rules. Petar Bojanić and Vladan Đokić, “Šta jeste arhitekturalni gest?,” in Petar Bojanić and
Vladan Đokić, ed., Arhitektura kao gest (Beograd: Univerzitet u Beogradu, Arhitektonski fakultet, 2011), 11–15.
13
Lejla Vujičić, “Architecture of the long durée: Vittorio Gregotti’s reading of the territory of architecture,” Arq
19, 2 (2015): 161–74.

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 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

outside the specifics of a particular historical period,14 proposes a three-layer method

of deconstruction of the concept of territory. The purpose of this method is operation
outside the formal and the rejection of an established dichotomy within architectural
discourses (such as urbanized and non-urbanized, natural and non-natural).15 The
first layer is about the stylistic and theoretical connection of the architectural disci-
pline with symbolic expression; the second layer is the “dialogue with the city”, which
involves both material and social, political and cultural circumstances; the third layer
describes memory, both personal and collective.16

Topographic Research Approach for Architecture

Theorist (and practitioner) of architecture and urbanism De Sola-Morales de-

scribes the contemporary environment through provocative representation which he
calls “fluid topography”17. Topography is a geographic category, but it can also be archi-
tectural. Architectural topography is characterized by physical representation, but also
the mental knowledge about different places, mapped on the basis of their characteris-
tics and their differences, where their description should not challenge or over-empha-
size their individuality. The topographic research method is an analytical and structural
description of the site, which aims to articulate the city through historical references
interwoven with current flows of thought, ideology and culture which is reflected in the
architecture, setting the task of deconstructing these places, discovering the origin of the
intentions of a generation, but also examining the importance and significance of posi-
tions within the overall structure of the territory. The significance of such a topograph-
ic research approach for architecture is that “architecture is the text to be deciphered,
revealed; one that, except in the process of its formation, is moving toward extinction,
which completely escapes the specifics of its particular origin.”18
One of the main characteristics of topography is that regardless of its horizontal
character it can never be equated only as the physical landscape, because it is always
seen with the assumption that it is a temporary inscription. As such it is a call to future
practices, and thus chronicles the situation of human activity. Based on this, it can be
concluded that topography is never in focus on its own, but the background of what at-
tention is drawn to, the background against which the various processes and flows inter-
sect.19 Because of this architectural topography is a witness to various physical and social
14
Vladimir Stevanović, “Racionalizam u arhitekturi: nekoliko modela instrumentalizacije,” AM Časopis za
studije umetnosti i medija 6 (2014): 114–24.
15
Vitorio Gregotti, “The Form of the Territory,” 7–22.
16
Maura Lucking, “The Form of the Discourse.”
17
Cf. Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture (Cambridge: The MIT
Press, 1996).
18
Ibid., 11.
19
David Leatherbarrow, “Topographical Premises,” Journal of Architectural Education 57, 3 (2004): 70–73.

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processes of spatial production, and thus certain processes and elements of change and
development can be mapped (positioned in the spatial and temporal sense).

Interpretive Potential of Architecture

The territory can be seen as a cultural construct, an inscription that testifies to

changes both in the physical domain as well as in the social domain. Physical space
is a manifestation of social processes, but also the result of different imperatives that
affect the formation of landscapes and territories on a concrete or abstract level.20
Certain philosophical systems of thought and literary technique represent initial ap-
proaches while observing territory as a specific narrative for examining the interpre-
tative potential of its elements.
The anthropologist Michel de Certeau developed the understanding of the place
and space, linking them with linguistic practice, describing the space as a combination
of places.21 Also, Roland Barthes, in his text Semiology and Urbanism,22 compares the
city with the language, but also draws attention to the issue of execution of the term
“language of the city”, arguing that it is a purely metaphorical condition. In order that
the “semantic approach to the city” may be achieved, Bart alleges, it is necessary to
strive to “understand the interplay of characters, to realize that each city is a structure,
but also that we must never try to fill that structure.”23 Looking at architecture as a
structural element of the territory, it can be described as a means of communication,
one that ‘tells the story’ of the city. Umberto Eco says that “architecture is one of the
areas in which semiotics is faced with greatest challenges”24, as the science that does
not deal only with established systems of signs but also studies all phenomena of cul-
ture as systems of different characters. With an approach based on semantics and
metaphors the aim of research on territory and architecture as an element of its struc-
ture is to ‘read’ some of the layers of the city, which is considered a cultural palimpsest
through processes and material layers of its changes and development.
If the starting point for the observation of the territory as a spatial narrative is
the interpretative potential of architecture, the methodological observation apparatus
is based on the starting points of structuralism and post-structuralism. The charac-
teristic of structuralism is to give priority to the problems of structure over the prob-
lems of history, phenomena or elements of ideology, thus avoiding the perception of

Peirce Lewis, “Axioms for Reading the Landscape,” in D. Meinig, The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes:
20

Geographical Essays (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1979), 11–33.

21
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
Rolan Bart, “Semiologija i urbanizam,” in Miloš Perović, ed., Antologija teorija arhitekture XX veka (Beograd:
22

Građevinska knjiga, 2009), 422–430.

23
Ibid., 429.
24
Umberto Eko, “Funkcija i znak: semiotika arhitekture,” in Petar Bojanić and Vladan Đokić, ed., Teorija ar-
hitekture i urbanizma (Beograd: Univerzitet u Beogradu, Arhitektonski fakultet, 2009), 155–74.

85
 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

the system as idealist or aprioristic. Post-structuralism was developed with the roots
of structuralism as a system of thought in which the system (language) is considered
as a code or a structure in which the meaning of the parts depends on their mutual
interaction and contrast, rather than with any element outside of the system. In the
context of post-structuralism its protagonists are connected by the tendency to develop
the possibilities of new models of social networking in the contemporary age (which is
then referred to the end of the 20th century). Observation of the territory through struc-
tural analysis aims to release it from any formal or material dialectics, emphasizing as
important those relations that can occur between elements within the system (existing
and imaginary). With that aim the total territory of the city is seen as a figure which
talks about the processes of development and the condition of the entire system, while
the elements that define it (including architecture) are seen as codes which define its
meaning. In this way the cultural text of a certain city, including Belgrade, is formed.

Terri(S)tory: Jajinci Memorial

Terri(s)tory represents the territorial inscription of a certain part of the collective

memory achieved through architectural topography. Seen in this context, memorials and
memorial parks are one of the possible forms of spatial narratives. Olga Manojlovic Pintar
isolates monuments (memorials) “as a specific topos that have mapped the landscape of
memory and historical culture of community”, which are made by “spatialization process-
es of political and ideological system of values and ways of articulating an ideology” as
“archaeological artefacts, and material traces of societies that were built or destroyed”25.
This research aims to remind about one possible territorial story, with the fact
that the “social practice of memory, is not exhausted by the symbolic, narrative and
ritual practices of creating landscapes of memory”26. In this way memory would not
have been officially completed on what is real and perceptual – “visible at a particular
moment – in the form of performed rituals, published article or built monuments”,27
but relocated to the domain of the possible.
By displacing the focus of research in architecture from phenomenological to
topographical discourse it is possible to emphasize the potential of a spatial narrative of
the territory and its structural elements. In order to examine the role of the architectural
gesture in the process of reading the city through spatial narratives award-winning solu-
tions for a contest focused on Memorial Park Jajinci were analysed.
In the period from autumn 1941 to autumn 1943 the former military shooting
range near the village of Jajinci at the foothill of Avala was the largest execution site on
the territory of occupied Serbia, where 80,000 men, women and children were killed and
25
Olga Manojlović Pintar, Arheologija sećanja. Spomenici i identiteti u Srbiji 1918–1989 (Beograd: Udruženje za
društvenu istoriju, Čigoja štampa, 2014), 9–10.
26
Hajke Karge, Sećanje u kamenu – okamenjeno sećanje? (Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek, 2013), 25.
27
Ibid., 137.

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 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

buried, according to the official, although probably inaccurate, data. This space was ade-
quate for the unhindered execution of tens of thousands of people, as well as for their bur-
ial, because of the surrounding dense forest and the presence of dykes and battlements.28
During the postwar period, in the early 1950s, the first memorial was placed – a
relief by the sculptor Stevan Bodnarov, with the base designed by the architect Leon
Kabiljo, while the surrounding area was made according to a project by the architects
Branko Bon and Mirković Brana and officially opened on the 20th of October 1964,
during the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the liberation of Belgrade. It
was renovated in 1988 when a monument made by Vojin Stojić was placed in its cen-
tral part, at the site of the largest grave.29 Before this gesture an architectural competi-
tion was held as an attempt to form a permanent spatial inscription.
The architectural competition for a plan for the memorial park Jajinci was an-
nounced in early April 1980 and lasted until the end of September 1980. The jury was
led by Dusan Gligorijević, President of the conference of the League of Communists
of the city of Belgrade, and the members were, among others, prominent architects of
that time: Ivan Antić, architect, prof. at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade; Bog-
dan Bogdanović, architect, prof. at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade; Cipani Bo-
ris, an architect from Skopje; Đorđevic Živa, an architect from Belgrade; Bogdan Ign-
jatović, an architect from Belgrade; Kabiljo Leon, architect, member of the Executive
Council of the city of Belgrade; and Ivan Straus, architect from Sarajevo. The design
brief suggested that the solutions should reconcile partially conflicting programs of
the memorial park which should contain “the status of a memorial complex, which in
a dignified and convincing manner gives reverence to the fallen victims”30, ​but at the
same time it should offer the possibility for “the organizing of larger and smaller cul-
tural and artistic, educational-pedagogical and similar content festive gatherings.”31
The design solutions were expected to „encourage visiting of the park (individual,
group and mass) every day and in every season, and not only when events and jubilees
were organized.”32 Through architectural realization this kind of ambitious program
had the potential for physical (story)telling of some significant previous stories, but
also for the creation of new ones through future forms of use. Another challenge that
was placed before the designers was the fact that the intervention was set in predom-
inantly natural surroundings, where the memorial park Jajinci should represent “the
most monumental and the most impressive green complex”33 within city greenery.

28
Olga Manojlović Pintar, “Treći krug terora. Mere odmazde, Stratišta: Okolina Beograda,” in Rena Rädle
and Milovan Pisarri, ed., Mesta stradanja antifašističke borbe u Beogradu 1941–44 (Beograd: Milan Radanović,
2013), 222–23.
29
Ibid.
30
Anonim, “Iz programa za idejno rešenje Spomen-parka Jajinci,” Arhitektura i Urbanizam 85 (1980): 78–81.
31
Ibid., 78.
32
Ibid.
33
Branko Maksimović, “O zelenilu Beograda,” Godišnjak grada Beograda, Knj. III (Beograd: Muzej grada Be-
ograda, 1956), 325–66.

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 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

Competition proposals were analyzed in relation to Gregotti’s three-layer

method of deconstruction of the concept of territory, i.e. through: 1) stylistic and
theoretical connection with symbolic expression, then through 2) ‘dialogue with the
city’, which involves material and social, political and cultural circumstances, and in
addition 3) through feelings and memories, both personal and collective.

Illustration 1: Jajinci, aero photo of the state after the liberation of Belgrade34

The winning proposal for the competition, according to the expert jury, should
be a turning point in the forming of memorial sites, achieved through continuity be-
tween the traditional, the contemporary and future methods. The main argument of
the jury in selecting the winning proposal was that this work “above all respected the
authenticity of the territory”35, which can be seen in the authors’ decision to return it to
its original state. The authors decided to “restrict access to this memorial site leaving it to
spontaneous rhythms of nature”36, allowing observation of the site from many positions,
angles of view and different heights. By placing the museum in the existing embank-
ment the authors isolated this place with glass (‘silence’), creating a spatial situation in
which the museum gallery allows a view of the terrain at almost eye-level, experiencing
one last look at the scaffold. The authors’ spatial articulation of architectural elements is
reminiscent of a contemporarily conceptualized archetype of tolos, while creating a pro-
fane space of an everyday utilitarian character and function juxtaposed to the secular
memorial place. The jury awarded this proposal with the first prize and a recommen-
dation for construction because of the “deep creative inspiration, originality of solution
and the contribution to a new way of looking at memorial monuments”37.
34
Source: B. Bogdanović at al., Katalog izložba konkursnih radova za idejno rešenje Spomen-parka Jajinci (Be-
ograd: Odbor za dovršenje spomen-parka Jajinci u Beogradu i Umetnički paviljon “Cvijeta Zuzorić”, 1980),
without pagination.
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
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Illustration 2: Winning proposal38

Based on Gregotti’s three-layer methods of deconstruction, the best quality of

the winning proposal is that it was based on a ‘dialogue with the place’, while em-
phasizing both its natural and social component. By applying archetypal symbolic
elements aspects of the memorial are unobtrusively highlighted, which in a natural
(enjoyable) way nourish the collective (through both a theoretical but also practical
connection between the territorial and the social).
In contrast to this proposal one of the two projects awarded an equal third
prize (second prize was not awarded) implements the idea of transformation by mak-
ing incisions in the territory, whose basic conceptual feature is a seal in the form of
a stylized star which disrupts its authenticity. In this way the voice of the place is
‘suffocated’, while ideologically accentuated symbolism is ‘screaming’ to the heights
from where it is possible to perceive it (aerial view), making ‘sharp blade’ cuts in the
collective memory.

38
Winning proposal (proposal no. 00041), author: Marko Mušić, contributor: Sonja Kolar, Marko Ušaj, Marjan
Starić, Tomaž Breskvar, Irena Geril, Rudolf Oven and Andrej Sovre. Source: B. Bogdanović at al., Katalog izlož-
ba konkursnih radova, without pagination.

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 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

Illustration 3: one of two 3rd prize proposals39

The second project awarded the third prize based its idea on the “stones that
resemble dispersed seeds which germinate from the scaffold”40, fostering collective
memory, without emphasizing ideological style elements, but also without establishing
a deeper dialogue with the place (in the spatial and semantic meaning). The jury de-
scribed the idea as ‘exciting’, one that evokes memories of village tombstones in Serbia,
although it can be stated as a kind of abstraction of the memorial, with no particular
attachment to the context of the location.

Illustration 3: one of two 3rd prize proposals 41

39
3rd prize proposal (proposal no. 13675), author: Dušan Džamonja, a sculptor from Zagreb, and Dragan Slavk-
ović from Belgrade – the conceptual design collaborator. Source: ibid.
40
Ibid.
3rd prize proposal (proposal no. 43287), authors: Jasminka Simović, collaborators: Vesna Svoboda, Đula Milo,
41

90 Vera Projeva, Slobodan Šaban and Svetlana Filipović. Source: ibid.

 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

Among the honorable mentions were proposals in which authors had the desire to
highlight the current state of the place by emphasized sculptural-architectural solutions
that suggested interesting possibilities (proposal no. 20240). There was also a proposal that
drastically cut the authentic space in two halves by using a strict triumphalistic style, with
certain distinctive solutions used in some elements (proposal no. 11013) – thus emphasiz-
ing the formal symbolism. Beside these proposals, among honourable mentions were also
those in which the symbolization of space was expressed, like in a proposal that suggested
an addition to the real, existing scaffold – Jajinci, by copying a conceptual drawing of yet
another Jajinci in an imagined mirror, as a way of establishing a philosophical dualism
between facts and the interpretation of alternative doubles like life-death or good-evil
(proposal no. 78900) – by which development of the theoretical aspects of symbolism and
its relation to the collective and memorial was improved. In the same group of honorable
mentions was also a proposal that kept the authentic terrain consistency by removing pre-
vious interventions and designing a free plateau. This proposal included symbolic gates
with a certain museological function, with the possibility of audio information, while their
dispositions and explicit allegories point to the city of the dead (proposal no. 84756) – and
at the same time accomplishing a dialogue both with the physical characteristics of the
place and
​​ its social and cultural aspects, with the aim to form a collective memory. Anoth-
er of the proposals awarded an honorable mention was one characterized by a tendency to
reference an ode to the sacred space of the former execution site primarily by horticultural
elements. This studious attempt of returning the former shooting range and surrounding
forests to their previous biological habitus deserves special attention. This simple idea was
not consistently implemented, and its authenticity was impaired on several points. The
jury marked this proposal more as a thesis which by minimalist interventions marked the
sacred space, countering pretentious and inadequate solutions in this way (proposal no.
12355) – while in relation to Gregotti’s three-layer method of deconstruction a territory
clearly indicates the potential both of the built and natural elements in the process of form-
ing spatial narratives of city territory.

Illustration 4: Honorable mention 142 Illustration 5: Honorable mention 243

42
Honorable mention 1 (proposal no. 20240), authors: Milun Vidić, Milan Arnaut and Nevena Bradić. Source: ibid.
Honorable mention 2 (proposal no. 11013), authors: Miodrag Živković, Slobodan Dragović, Zorica Janković,
43

Puteš Ajdin, Živorad Radenković, Rajko Nikolić, Dragan Petrović; collaborators: Gordana Radović, Dragan
Kvajtkovski and Marina Dragović. Source: ibid. 91
 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

Honorable mention 344 Honorable mention 445 Honorable mention 546

According to Bogdan Bogdanovic the architectural gesture, or spatial interven-

tion, can be seen as potential “housing of metaphors”, that could be “a historical object
of decentralized functions and meanings”47 at the observed moment. Related to such
a way of looking at individual spatial interventions, Bogdanović sees the situation in
which the city “grows and spills over its borders of human comprehension” as a rea-
son for the “process of disappearance of the city”48. In this regard, it can be said that
cities exist “as long as the human imagination for them exist” or “the moment when
the image of the city in ourselves begins to numb, the city around us – regardless of
the concrete, asphalt and noise of the city – doesn’t exist anymore.”49 In this context an
architectural gesture and spatial intervention cannot be viewed as isolated and hidden
artefacts but rather through complex “natural and artificial systems and their semi-
otic or semantic projections”50, during which their hidden and metaphoric semantic
worth offers the potential for interpretation of spatial narratives in many ways.
Memorial complexes and architectural totems formed for similar occasions
represent elements of the configuration of the territory that, observed independently,
may indicate just a few possible directions for further development. But new possi-
bilities of their usage may be established if we look at them within the field of opera-
tion, through the establishment of new relations. In this way, an architectural gesture
becomes the “change, establishment of a difference” within the established flows and

44
Honorable mention 3 (proposal no. 78900), authors: Marjan Čehovin, Mustafa Musić, Stevan Žutić, collabo-
rators: Zvonko Petrović, Gordana Nikolić, Stanko Dragović, Gorana Rodić and Nada Bogunović. Source: ibid.
45
Honorable mention 4 (proposal no. 84756), authors: Dragan Živković, collaborators: Suna Drašković, Jasmi-
na Dilevska and Petar Korać. Source: ibid.
46
Honorable mention 5 (proposal no. 12355), authors: Мira Хalambek-Wenzler, Фedor Wenzler, lvo Wenzler,
architect from Zagreb; author of drawing: Ljubo Škrnjug, painter; collaborators: Jasenka Piščetek and Dragica
Hobolić. Source: ibid.
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid.
49
Bogdan Bogdanović, Tri ratne knjige (Mediterran: Novi Sad, 2008), 34.
50
B. Bogdanović at al., Katalog izložba konkursnih radova, without pagination.

92
 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

“a moderator more that an author”51 within the emerging dialogue within the newly
formed relations.
Each of these dialogues is an opportunity for the development of different spa-
tial interpretations that could describe the situation in which these elements of the ter-
ritory are at the moment.52 Elements of the territory structure should be seen within a
comprehensive scheme that links these two approaches of observation – through the
element and the whole in order to read the spatial narrative of the previous processes
of the city’s development. For this reason it is necessary to observe the individual el-
ement within the overall topographical and historical contexts that constitute a city,
where every kind of rootedness – geographical or social – varies as the environmental
circumstances of its place.
“Labelling systems for production and transference of cultural meanings”53 may
be formed by comparative observation of territory and landscape through the figurative
forms of their structure, but also through the medium which combines dynamic and
constitutive relations between elements into various processes of development (social,
political-economic, cultural and historical). In this way the territory, similar to the land-
scape, becomes a spatial inscription from which social and cultural processes of devel-
opment can be read.54 Through the reading of such a ‘document’ it is possible to see and
understand the processes of territory development55 as well as tensions that were present
in different moments between the elements that configure its structure.56

Closing Remarks – Interpretive Potential of a Territory:

Role of Architectural Gesture

By observing the territory through its dynamic constituent elements and re-
lations between them the focus of understanding the territory and the city as a stat-
ic and symbolic representation is displaced to the dynamic processes of formation of
cultural significance, within which layers and processes of development may be ob-
served. Regarding all these methods of observation it is clear that there is a vital policy
of reading, representation and reconstruction of territory in respect of its structural
elements.57 In these circumstances, the architectural elements of topography repre-
51
Vitorio Gregotti, in Maura Lucking, “The Form of the Discourse,” 19.
52
Ignasi De Solà Morales, “Territori/Territories,” Lotus 110 (2010): 49.
53
James Duncan and Nancy Duncan, “(Re)Reading the Landscape,” Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space 6, 2 (1988): 117–26.
54
Ibid.
55
Cf. James Duncan, The City as Text: the politics of landscape interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
56
Cf. John Wylie, Landscape (London: Routledge, 2007).
57
Denis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press,
1998); Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United

93
 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

sent codes of communication that through various configurations and compositions

form a spatial narrative about the relations between the natural and the social within
the process of territory development. The role of the architectural project in such a
model of territory observation, as Gregotti states, is to call attention to the substance
of territory structure through the transformation of its elements (like the architectural
gesture).58 That was the reason for using his methodology for structural analysis of the
territory and networking of cultural and historical meanings generated through the
relationship of the architectural gesture and nature.
Aldo Rossi describes the urban artefact as “material construction”, which regardless
of conditionality “bears ability to dictate conditions”, while he describes the city primarily
as a “product of the people”, which consists of its architecture and all those gestures which
are “means for the transformation of nature”59. Rosi defines significant characteristics of
the city “as a human achievement par excellence”60, based on the observations of Claude
Lévi-Strauss that a balance between natural and artificial elements is achieved through the
city, which represents “object of nature and the subject of culture”61, as well as based on
the words of Maurice Halbwachs that “imagination and collective memory are the typical
characteristics of urban artefacts”62. In this way relations between place, individual and
artefact are created and provide a “complex model for the study of the city”63.
Observed in this way, every architectural gesture also represents a human
product that becomes the subject of culture through the transformation of nature,
which in some cases represents the materialization of the collective memory, and cer-
tainly the means to study the development of the city territory.
Architecture through physical intervention in the ground changes the terrain
and also defines the territory. The different ways of forming its geographical aspect is
reflected in the future development processes (and changes) of the environment that
was formed in this manner. Regarding its changeability and the fluidity of the process
that defines and describes it, as well as in terms of the fact that it is produced through
some form of power (over natural or social), territory is a historical category which
testifies about different processes of development. For these reasons the territory can
be seen as a cultural construct, an inscription that testifies about the changes both in
the physical domain as well as in the social domain. By architectural intervention in
the physical, through the definition of the social, territory gains in stability through
spatial traces of different layers of development.

States (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993); David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1996).
58
Vitorio Gregotti, “The Form of the Territory,” 7–22.
59
Aldo Rossi, “Arhitektura grada,” in Miloš Perović, ed., Antologija teorija arhitekture XX veka (Beograd:
Građevinska knjiga, 2009), 415–22.
60
Ibid., 416.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid., 417.

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 Janković, N., Architectural Terri(s)tories, AM Journal, No. 12, 2017, 81-98.

The competition for the Jajinci memorial as a case study was analyzed through
stylistic and theoretical relations of architecture with symbolic expression, then
through the ‘dialogue with the place’ and the collective memory. The aim was to note
one form of the ‘fluid topography’ arising from the conception of a possible physi-
cal intervention, analyzed through analytical and structural description of the place,
bringing it in connection with mental knowledge, ideology and culture that is reflect-
ed in the architectural proposals, which shape architecture like a text that needs to
be ‘deciphered’. In this way the formed trace gives an image (inscription, writing) of
changes both in the physical domain as well as in the field of the social, within which
architecture is a medium of communication through which it is possible to ‘read’
some of the stories within the palimpsest of the city development.

Relations between things are equally important as the thing itself.64

Bogdan Bogdanović, while describing the ambient, said that the lack of the
spiritual minimizes the possibility of some kind of emotional identification with the
city, what further leads to a “collective neurosis ambient”, which he describes as “dis-
orientation in time and space, and phenomena of general insecurity of perceptions
and opinions, states of tragic emotional emptiness and, finally, the various stages of
an irrevocable collective amnesia”65. By forming ambients such as the memorial park
Jajinci, the architectural gesture represents a significant phrase of spatial inscription of
territorial and social formation of the city, creating in this way a specific architectural
topography by which the level of collective amnesia is reduced.

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Article received: December 22, 2016

Article accepted: January 18, 2017
Original scholarly paper

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