Toward A Concrete Utopia: Brutalist Yugoslavian Architecture

A new exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art focuses on the period of intense construction in the former Yugoslavia between its break with the Soviet bloc in 1948 and the death of the country’s longtime leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980

Situated between the capitalist West and the socialist East, Yugoslavia’s postwar architects responded to contradictory demands and influences by developing an architecture both in line with and distinct from the design approaches seen elsewhere in Europe and beyond.

Photographs by Valentin Jeck, commissioned by Moma, 2016.

Monument to the Battle of the Sutjeska

Miodrag Živković, 1965–71, Tjentište, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

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Revolution Square (today Republic Square)

Edvard Ravnikar, 1960–74, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

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Avala TV Tower

Uglješa Bogunović, Slobodan Janjić, and Milan Krstić, 1960–65 (destroyed in 1999 and rebuilt in 2010), Mount Avala, near Belgrade, Serbia.

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Monument to the Uprising of the People of Kordun and Banija

Berislav Šerbetić and Vojin Bakić,1979–81, Petrova Gora, Croatia.

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Živa Baraga and Janez Lenassi, 1965, Ilirska Bistrica, Slovenia

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National and University Library of Kosovo

Andrija Mutnjaković, 1971–82, Pristina, Kosovo.

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Braće Borozan building block in Split 3

Dinko Kovačić and Mihajlo Zorić, 1970–79. Split, Croatia.

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Telecommunications Centre

Janko Konstantinov, 1968–81, Skopje, Macedonia.

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S2 Office Tower

Milan Mihelič, 1972–78, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

brutalist-yugoslavian-architecture

Šerefudin White Mosque

Zlatko Ugljen, 1969–79, Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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Monument to the Ilinden Uprising

Jordan and Iskra Grabul, 1970–73, Kruševo, Macedonia.

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