Architecture of the Third Way

In 2006 Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas visited Energoprojekt, the formerYugoslav engineering giant, in Belgrade, Serbia. He interviewed Energoprojekt’schief engineer and manager who worked from the 1970s to the 1990sin Lagos, Nigeria, and in other countries of the so called Non-Aligned Movement.The content of this interview has not been made public and at thistime there are no plans for its publication. The presentation will use thetranscript of this interview (courtesy of Mr.Koolhaas) to chart the history ofEnergoprojekt and its architectural and urban implications during the transitionfrom state-supported modern architecture of late socialism to today’scrisis of emerging capitalist democracy.The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was founded in 1961 in Belgrade inorder to collectivize the third world countries that were not part of eitherthe West capitalist or the East communist block. NAO was often calleda an international “third way” in geo-politics. Yugoslavia was one of thethree founders of NAM. Architecture and engineering as well military tradeplayed major roles in this geo-political development of the third way. By themid-1980s the architecture department of the major Belgrade-based statecorporation Energoprojekt was expanded to receive talented young designersto help meet the immediate need for design services commissioned from thevarious NAM governments. This urgent jump in demand made Energoprojektas on of the most important commercial entities within any Socialistsystem. Thanks to NAM, Energoprojekt received massive infrastructural andmilitary projects in the Middle East and Africa which included architecturalcommissions. These were mostly state projects in such places as Libya andIraq, but also included semi-commercial commissions for hotels in Zimbabwe,and Fairs and Stadiums in Nigeria.During the 1990s post-modernism exploded on the scene impacting nearlyall architectural aspects inside the crumbling state of Yugoslavia. Even withthe development of the local post-Yugoslav brand “Turbo Architecture,”the international engineering contracts that Energoprojekt held maintainedmodern and straightforward solutions. The separation between glitzy domesticpostmodern architecture and modern engineering abroad led to a nearlyschizophrenic situation within the Socialist idea of globalization. On the onehand would become the main architectural tool for Slobodan Milošević’snationalist agenda while. On the other hand the company projected its internationalimage as a successful global engineering corporation to the Middleand Far East as well as Africa, and increasingly in the countries of theformer Soviet Union.This paper will focus on the survival of the socialist corporate architecturegiant Energoprojekt thanks to its engineering corps rather than its architecture.The knowledge about this has been missing at-large; this paperuses the Mr.Koolhaas’ unpublished interview to retell this story, asses itsimplications for international practice of architecture and urbanism todayand reflect on the relevance of former Socialist practice vis-a-vis the ongoingglobal economical struggle.

Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa

ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1