Radical or not at all? Architectural criticism as a vehicle of CIAM and Team 10 networking in socialist Yugoslavia

Abstract

The paper focuses on multi-layered roles of criticism in mapping architectural discourse, particularly its main actors and modes. It will present the context of CIAM X held in Dubrovnik simultaneously as 8th General Assembly of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) took place there. The starting point is the political and ideological context in Yugoslavia during the 1950s and 1960s which provides an insight into the positioning the Croatian architecture and urban planning and/within/or Yugoslavian history as a key sign of the relationship between modernity and socialism. The proposed paper aims to clarify how political and cultural position of Yugoslavia “in-between” East and West determined connections of CIAM’s new generation around Team X with Yugoslav architects. The paper examines these ties through international institutional framework during the 1950s and 1960s, particular attention will be paid to critical reception and appropriation of new approaches. Special attention will be paid to the cultural transfer exemplified by the connections between architect Radovan Nikšić from Zagreb and the circle around Bakema and Van den Broek that resulted with appropriation of new structuralist approaches in local milieu. By close reading of characteristic examples, debates and networks the aim is to examine the changes which occurred in the political, economic and cultural structure of societal modernisation and to examine the shifts of meaning(s) and cultural values.