SPATIAL STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS

This is the Palace of Serbia in Belgrade (Serbia), known also as the Palace of the Federation or SIV, the building built for the federal administration of Yugoslavia, where the Federal executive council (the Government of Yugoslavia) held its meetings. This is the building wherefrom the once worldwide admired “Yugoslav experiment” of “producers democracy” or “worker`s self-management” was initiated and managed, where President Tito received statesmen from around the world, where the the Non-Aligned States movement held its first congress in 1961. This is a building that was intentionally designed to represent a state, a social order, a building to make history.

This is the building where the consecutive governments and administrations of disintegrating SFR Yugoslavia (later FR Yugoslavia, even later State union of Serbia and Montenegro and presently Serbia) were holding their meetings, where various presidents, prime ministers, ministries and agencies were located during and after the falling apart of the state the building was built to represent. One cannot help but wonder how could it be the scene for both success and failure, fame and defamation, recognition and oblivion? Have both scenarios been built-in?

Recently I have attended a meeting in this building, and was sitting in its most representative salon, the salon Yugoslavia, under the crystal chandelier that allegedly is one of the largest such things in the world. I was in the same salon that had seen so many presidents, prime ministers, and other dignitaries from around the world, along with many other celebrities. I was in a building that was a statement expressing the vision of society that Yugoslavia was hoping to build: a society of dignity, equality, fraternity, freedom, just distribution, ruled by redemptive power of reason and art, where the state works for the benefit of many, not the few.

Despite being admittedly a bit nostalgic, I do not intend to claim that Yugoslavia indeed had built such a society, but nevertheless, the building itself demonstrates such qualities in both exterior forms and in interior settings. The intention to build a better future, a more just social order, to defend the human right to dignity, to a dignified life for every human being is almost palpable inside this monumental space.

But history chose other path. Yugoslavia, as is well known, disintegrated in a series of bloody wars starting in 1991, and none of the successor countries cares much for the qualities expressed in this building. The once powerful state the building represented literary started to crumble after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While territories parted from Yugoslavia and the state changed its name multiple times, every new name referring to a territorially smaller and smaller entity, the successive governments and administrations of these entities have used this building. Currently the building is used by the government of Serbia and houses several cabinet level ministries and agencies.

FORM, POSITION, ORIENTATION

The impact of such a highly symbolic building should be evaluated through a highly symbolic system of qualitative analysis, so I decided to look into it through Feng Shui, and set out to evaluate the semiotics of location and external form as the most basic level of analysis dealing with most powerful formative forces. Doing that, the first thing I had to establish was whether the building was located in a safe place. Strategically speaking I had to see whether the back was secured, the flanks defendable and the front unobstructed to enable free movement. In Feng Shui terms, I had to see to which extent the terrain around the building complied to the ideal model of a “dragon lair”.

Compared to the ideal model, the Palace of Federation is in a position of having extremely “weak back”, given that the main official entrance is located on the southwestern facade, facing towards New Belgrade, while the terrain slopes away from the back of the building towards the confluence point of rivers Danube and Sava. Water represents movement, travel and ways of transportation, which is the opposite of stability and protection associated with the “mountain” or the back. The back of the building also turns towards the outward edge of the river bend, which is usually the side eroded by the flowing water. This formation is also undermining, destabilizing, weakening the quality of stability needed at the back of the building.

The structure of the building itself also indicates a weak back due to the H-shaped base, while the landscaping solution resembling three mountains at the base of the H is not large enough, has no enough symbolic power to compensate the effect of topography and of built structure. The middle wing of the building provides some protection to the lower, most representative frontal part, but the middle wing itself has no support.

So both form and posiition indicate a “weak back”. In a previous post I have written about what having a place with “weak back” can do in individual life, how it drains the energy making it impossible to build up results of one`s efforts, eventually leading to physical illness even. It seems that the effects are very similar on collective entities, at least when buildings of such high symbolic significance as this one are concerned.

ORIENTATION AND SPATIAL RELATIONS

Doing research for this article, I have come upon an interesting fact that sheds more light – naturally, at the level of patterns and symbols - on the reasons for disintegration of the country: the orientation of the building was changed during the construction. Originally it was envisioned to face the river, but the author of the plan died during the construction, and the new lead architect had turned the face of the building towards the newly built capital city instead. Did the new architect condemn his country to disintegration by this decision? It would be a largely exaggerated claim to say he did. But, besides weakening the back of the building, the decision has changed the spatial relations of the spatial symbols in the area.

The important symbols in this regard are the buildings that could represent some conflicting, non-yugoslav entities. Given that Before WW I the rivers separated were the borderline between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Yugoslavia was created after WW I unifying some territories previously belonging to the the Empire and Serbia (also Montenegro and Macedonia), I have checked the spatial relations of buildings representing those two entities and the Palace of Federation representing Yugoslavia.

To represent Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Gardoš Tower in Zemun seemed appropriate. It is a symbolic building by intention, built by the Hungarian authorities in 1896 to mark the 1000 year anniversary of Hungarian state and the belonging of this territory to Hungary. For Serbia I found the landmark-fortress Kalemegdan the core and the oldest section of the urban area of Belgrade, the Capital city of Serbia before WW I.

Related to the Palace of Federation as it is oriented now, both these buildings are located “behind” the building,in positions outside the angle of view from the “face”. Thus both Gardoš and Kalemegdan might be interpreted as symbolizing hidden, unresolved things for Yugoslavia. If the Palace of Federation was to face the river, the two fortresses would be in the field of vision, which could mean under control, visible. Making unresolved things visible might have opened the possibility of bringing the conflict to light and resolving it.

The conflicting relation between the two symbolic buildings – Gardoš and the Kalemegdan – is confirmed in feng shui terms by their directional situation in relation to the Palace of the Federation. Gardoš is located to the northwest, which carries the energy of phase/element metal, while Kalemegdan is located to the east, having the energy of phase/element wood. Wood is destroyed by metal, indicating that Kalemegdan (Serbia) could have felt its identity threatened by Gardoš (Hungary, or the legacy of Austro-Hungarian Empire). Water of the river Danube could be the connection between these points, taking energy from metal and nourishing wood, thus turning conflict into cooperation if the Palace of Federation was to face the river. But, Danube actually flows at the back of the Palace of Federation symbolizing danger, or, more precisely, in the context of unprotected back it can be interpreted as an underground stream of tensions and conflict that builds up unnoticed with time passing.

The analysis could be carried on to check on more details, to take into consideration more historical, geographical, social and cultural facts, but in my experience, the patterns detected on such a basic level of analysis would probably reappear on other levels of analysis too. Naturally, this interpretation cannot be proven. There is no way to tell for sure whether the conflict and disintegration could have been avoided by a different orientation of this iconic building, and there is no way to revert history. But I happen to believe that geography, urbanism and architecture is the scenography that enables directs and alters the flow of history.