Notes on Edge Conditions
a project for a bath on a river dock in Belgrade
A. Ferrarini (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Jorge Mejia Hernandez – Mentor (TU Delft - Situated Architecture)
Aleksandar Staničić – Mentor (TU Delft - Situated Architecture)
P.H.M. Jennen – Mentor (TU Delft - Design of Constrution)
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Abstract
The project for a public bath in Belgrade offers a chance to reflect on the current transformations of the city. On the one hand, the rivers. The role that the Sava and the Danube played in the life of the city changed from borders to infrastructural arteries in the past century, turning the shores of the city into industrial areas. Connected by a railway that cut the city away from the river, these areas are today a dormant grey zone. As the Old Railway is being removed, the city can reconsider its relation to the water: what Belgrade will be reflected on the rivers? Taking into consideration the possibility of developments led by privatisation and land value, the project investigates what other approaches architecture can offer in considering the relation of the city to its territory. In order to root itself into the history of the city, the project revives a tradition which was recently interrupted: the one of public baths. Despite their diffused presence in the different cultures which contributed to today’s Belgrade, the segregation of bathing into the private sphere led all the baths in the city to shut their doors. Through a program that gathers collectivity and intimacy, protection and exposure, the projects aims at articulating a bath on a dismissed dock, on the edge of the city and the Sava river. In-between the body and the community, the city and the landscape, the baths aims at framing and connecting seemingly unrelated scales and experiences.