SPATIAL STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS

BELGRADE WATERFRONT DEVELOPMENT

Urbanism seems to be a very hot topic in Belgrade. This is very strange, given that the vast majority of Belgrade’s million-plus residents try to figure out where they belong in the new global order and to make ends meet from one day to another. Serbians are once again adjusting to an uneasy position on the fluid frontiers of Europe`s borderlands and ideologies. But there seem to be no fluid values and ideas when it comes to urbanism. Tensions are mounting, emotions are running high, mass rallies are held, articles are written and circulated around the world, fierce urban activists pledge to give no quarter to the “investor urbanism”, there are rumors of police crackdowns and political victimization...

In the meantime the project fueling all this uproar, the Belgrade Waterfront development entered its first phase of construction. The Dubai development firm, Eagle Hills plans to develop a 90 hectares complex of luxury condos complete with a Belgrade Tower skyscraper on low land along the eastern bank of river Sava, replacing the railway- and bus stations now occupying the plot.

What is...

And what is envisioned here:

It is not the only project in the city that can be qualified as “investor urbanism”, of course. Belgrade already bears the scars of internationally financed grandomania built in steel, glass and concrete, as well as the decaying remainders of development fiascos of different times. Still, this one seems to be different. The government is determined to see the project through at all costs, the activists are equally ardent to stop it`s realization. My friends, clients and students often ask me what do I think about the development, or rather “what would feng shui say about Belgrade Waterfront?”

Significance

Now I shall try to answer these questions, sine irae et studiorum, using feng shui as a value-neutral, apolitical interpretational frame of reference. For the purpose of carrying this analysis through, I`ll put aside my skeptical eastern-European self and my experience-hardened disbelief in meaningfulness and feasibility of large magnitude projects in this part of the world in the post-cold war era. So, I will assume that the plan is going to be realized in due time, within the planned budget and with minor changes, and see why is this particular project so important, what its influence might be.

As many other development projects around the world, Belgrade Waterfront is a spatial statement, the materialization and spatialization of a new global order of capital flow, consisting of high-rise buildings to be designed by international star-architects. Gleaming glass-and steal towers offering luxury condos, paved public spaces with carefully trimmed and framed greenery, high-end restaurants and cafés, and, of course, the inevitable sacral center of this order “the biggest shopping mall in...”. It is contemporary in global terms, designed as a celebration of might of technology and capital breaking free from the bondages of space and time. As such, it naturally disregards any local characteristic, has no linkage to the place and its complexity. But, once built, it will still be part of the place, it will be merged in a net of spatial relations, communications, social fabric. And it will influence and be influenced by the place, the neighborhood, the city in which is stands. This possible future influence is what I would like to share some thoughts about.

First of all, I believe the Belgrade Waterfront development has the ambition of equal magnitude as the SIV (Palace of Serbia) building I have written about in the previous post. Being advertized as a visionary project aiming to visually rebrand and modernize the city and being saturated with all the human energy invested in pros and contras, the Belgrade Waterfront project, realized or not, definitely pertains to claim the adjective “iconic”. As such, it definitely expresses, and will influence the social fabric of the city, regardless of being realized or not.

It is still unclear, though, what this icon should represent for Belgrade. For the activists, were they successful in stopping or altering the project, it should be the icon of people`s right to the city, participatory planning, observation of public interest. The government`s vision is that it will be an icon of modernization. The city architect enthuses that, should the project succeed, the Belgrade Waterfront will remake the city more profoundly than anything since World War II.

Sacred Geography

Speaking of icons, my analysis should begin with the most contested part of the plan, the Belgrade Tower (Kula Beograd), the 42 story or 168 m high skyscraper (height was reduced from the originally planned 225 or so meters), housing a five-stars hotel and branded apartments. This particular building is designed to become “an iconic landmark to the skyline, symbolizing the Serbian capital`s rising global stature”, as explained by the architecture firm SOM which designed the tower. Of course they say that. What else could be said about a skyscraper but that it will stand out against the skyline?

But will it indeed stand for the “rising global stature” of the city? Looking at the yet to be built skyscraper`s position on the map, somehow the Five Great Mountains (Wu Yu) of China`s sacred geography floats into my mind. The Five great mountains arranged according to the four cardinal directions plus center, representing the emanation of heavenly order on the physical plain, containing China as an altar or a mandala among them.

What “calls up the image” (He Xiang) of the Chinese mountains, are the spatial relation of the site of the prospective Belgrade Tower to the landmark high-rises designed to represent the Eastern and Western gates of Belgrade, built in an earlier age, marking the symbolic boundaries of the city along the motorway E-75 and greeting people arriving to the capital of (then) Yugoslavia. The Belgrade Tower will be located in the middle of the line connecting the two gates, on the shore of the river dividing the eastern and western parts of the city. It somehow resembles the east-west axis of China, with the Eastern Gate as Tai Shan on the east, Western Gate as Hua Shan on the west, and the Belgrade Tower as Song Shan in the middle, on the point of connection/division. The resemblance becomes even more convincing if a perpendicular axis is drawn to the described one, and the Kalemegdan fortress appears on this line as the Northern Heng Shan. From this angle, the Belgrade Tower could really be the point of integration of the two big and very different parts of the city; to unite old and new Belgrade in a pattern reflecting the order of the domain of ideas (Heaven).

Composite chart overlying the map of geology of the area on Google Maps Terrain

But “calling up the image” (He Xiang) is not a very reliable technique for analysis. The results depend on many variables. Where I see sacred mountains, someone else might see Nazca lines or, including other high-rise buildings, drawing an apple or something else on the map.

To get a better picture, we have to consider surrounding forms, location, orientation and the symbolic meanings within the spatio-social context. In other words, we have to evaluate what this site means within the city.

Location, orientation, meaning

At first glance, the project is quite poorly positioned. The high-rises will be built on low land along the eastern bank of river Sava. The terrain is flat, and every road to the various central parts of the old city leads more or less steeply uphill. The old name of the site is quite telling: it is known as Venetia Marsh (Bara Venecija). Building on such low, easily flooded, unstable terrain probably containing stall water should be considered “bad feng shui”. It should, but there are a few historical facts to consider:

The site was initially made part of the city exactly by “forces of globalization” about a century and a half ago, and the development from 150 years ago did exactly what the current one promises: transformed the otherwise conservative city, initiated its modernization and helped to include Belgrade in the contemporary global currents. By the provisions of Berlin Peace Treaty  from 1878, the Serbian government and the ruling Prince Milan Obrenović were obligated to merge Serbia into the railroad system of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as quickly as possible. The Venetia Marsh was drained and filled in to provide space for the central railway station and the infrastructure needed. The economically and financially weak state had to ask for help of international investors, and after a number of political storms, corruption scandals and parliamentary hearings, the government entrusted the building concession to a French company, while the most representative building – the station – was designed by a famous architect from Wien.

So, 150 years ago, we had all the elements of the present situation at the site: the expensive development, the impoverished state, the government that has to see the development through, the opposition, corruption, political pressure, “investor urbanism”, disregard of the “couleur locale”. And the result at that time was? According to the 19th century expert for Southeast Europe, Felix Kanitz, quoted in the Encyclopedia of Architecture of Belgrade of 19th and 20th century, the railway brought the western values, ways of life and trends to the otherwise conservative city. It has transformed the old ways, discontinued traditions, but it has also brought huge material and financial improvement.

The railway station`s main building was positioned to face uphill, towards the town center, turning its back towards lower land and the river. The Waterfront complex will be oriented in the opposite direction, facing the river, as defined by the flagship position of the Belgrade Tower, which provides the complex with a relatively strong back, and the possibility of collecting energy rolling downhill from the plateau on which the old part of city is situated, through the streets sloping towards the site of the Waterfront.

The Railway station facing uphill

The Belgrade Waterfront facing towards the river

Feng shui operates with the universal essence, of which everything consists. In its dynamic form it is considered Qi, the movement and dynamics of energy, people, wind, water, traffic – in short, all dynamic phenomena of the world, both tangible and intangible. Qi rolls with the hills, moves towards the lowest points, is accelerated through narrow paths – generally behaves like water. In a non-moving, still state this essence manifests as matter. Qi is equated to change, movement, circulation, development, action while matter (or forms) are equated to stability, stillness, support and material results. Thus higher and enclosed ground is equated with stillness and protection, which is preferable to have at the part of space that we do not see, so we have no control of it – at our back. Lower ground is equated to movement, advancement and action, which we prefer to have control over, so we like to have it in front of us, to face it.

Qi can be directed and contained by material forms, and the amount of accumulation depends on the size of the form containing it. Therefore “weak” back means low accumulation capacity of a site. As the railway station was composed of low linear infrastructure and low buildings, while facing the strong influx of qi from the plateau, it had a low accumulation capacity, it was under constant pressure from flashflood-like energy coming downhill, and the face turned towards the hills made the up-hill and up-stream connection to the town difficult, causing Qi to rush through the site, breaking havoc. Indeed, the Encyclopedia of Architecture of Belgrade of 19th and 20th century quotes articles from as early as 1919, stating that the Railway station failed to establish a connection to the traditional commercial center of the city, and criticizing the traffic jam around the station. The traffic only got worse over time, and is still a big problem in this part of the city, despite the decline of railway traffic and the importance of railway.

The Waterfront complex will be facing the river, receiving support from the higher ground of the old town and the surrounding hills, while the high-rise buildings will be able to contain among them more of qi coming downhill, than the low buildings and linear infrastructure of the Railway station. This formation points to a better connection of the new development with the old part of town, but unfortunately, it also indicates that much of the commercial activity will be relocated (“washed down” ) from the old center to the Waterfront, devaluating the now high value of commercial spaces of the old center.

The planned high-rises made of concrete, steel and glass are visually and symbolically linking the eastern bank of the river Sava to the western bank, modernity to tradition; openness, movement and vision of the flat terrain to the stability, tradition and protection the hills provide to the old part of the city. The Belgrade Tower with the adjacent mall is in a lynchpin position between the two, and the planned pedestrian-cyclist bridge in front of the tower-mall complex provides a slower, more relaxed connection to the “other side”, improving and changing the quality of communication between two parts, between East and West, opening a path for values of East to be shown and materialized on the West.

Across the river from the Waterfront site lays the mega-development New Belgrade, the residential tower-garden district. New Belgrade is the largest one of the newest of the city’s 17 municipalities, a Radiant City planned by Tito’s government in the late 1940s on a flood plain. Built out in the 1950s and ’60s, New Belgrade houses more than 200,000 people in 72 superblocks, designed as a paean to the progressive living standards enshrined by the Athens Charter, a one-size-fits-all prescription for maximizing utility and the quality of life. More recently New Belgrade is also the site where big banks and corporations build their headquarters. These headquarters are, naturally in accordance with global trends, high-rise creations made of glass and steel, regardless whether they were designed by local or foreign architects.

Presently the two parts of the city are quite distant from each other at the section of the Waterfront. The industrial-infrastructural use on the eastern bank, and a bloc of spontaneous slum-ish housing on the western bank establish a wide no-go zone between old and new Belgrade. The communication is narrowed to the two bridges at the flanks of the Waterfront site. These bridges are overburdened by traffic, especially in rush hours. The communication between east and west is thus impeded; the East isolated from the West, which, on the level of symbolic meanings, can be interpreted as a chasm between plans and realizations, past and future, beginnings and ends. One can`t help but see the bridges as some kind of canyons, through which patterns and energy of movement are concentrated and constricted, a formation considered a source of Sha Qi (killing Qi) in feng shui. This certainly is a source of frustration for people who need to traverse those bridges many times a day, and possibly one of the causes of heightened level of aggression in the society. 

The situation on the site now

The Waterfront development and the award winning design for development of the Bloc 18 facing the Waterfront on the other bank of the river:

The Waterfront and the development planned to replace the bloc of spontaneous housing across the river cancels the no-go zone, brings the two parts of the city closer to each other in both symbolic and spatial terms, while the planned pedestrian-cyclist bridge provides a less aggressive flow across the river, linking east and west and all the meanings they represent. The bridge opens a path for the energy gathered on the eastern bank to pass towards west less aggressively, opening possibility for the eastern (old) part of the city to “cross the river” and present itself and its accomplishments in the modern world.

Good or bad

When asked if something is good or bad “in feng shui”, I always find it very difficult to give a simple answer. Probably because good and bad are judged from the angle of individual values, ideas, morality and expectations, while feng shui is a value-neutral analytical frame within which the patterns of events occurring at a place and linked to the geometrical patterns of both physical and abstract space can be discovered, interpreted and extrapolated. Patterns and geometry are neither good, nor bad. They just are.

In the conclusion, I can not say whether The Belgrade Waterfront development is “good” or “bad” for the city. I can say that the site is important within the city space. It is the point of “make or break”, of integration or dissolution. Whether it will show its “good” or “bad” side, depends very much upon the timeframe of completition. It is the point that can open or close the traditional part of the city to the contemporary world (or at least Europe) for better or for worse. Given that the site is located to the southwest from the Republic Square (Trg Republike), the center of the traditional city, and the southwest signifies the masses or multitude, the opening of the site towards the west might indeed add an impulse to the change of the traditional social fabric and to the transformation of root values of society. Enabling the Qi rolling downhill to collect and congeal at this site could be interpreted as a possibility to change the self-image of the city and the society. These are all long-term processes which, should the investment fail to be completed within a relatively short timeframe, might also backfire, changing the conditions in the city for worse, empowering isolationist and anti-modernization tendencies.

About the concrete design envisioned for the Belgrade Waterfront, it could be said that the specific design at that specific site supports the visual integration of the city territory, the creation of an image of modernity, the communication and establishing a better link between east and west, action and results, plans and realizations. It is probably also “good” for commerce. And if those things are important and desirable in your opinion, then yes, it is good.

What I can not say is, whether the Belgrade Waterfront is good or bad for the identity of the city of Belgrade, described in the Places Journal as “A postmodern city that predates the concept of the postmodern, Belgrade contains fragments of so many other urbanities that it can never quite be said to exist as itself.”. Notions of identity are exactly what the conflicts are about, and identity is, indeed an all-important issue. Nevertheless, all I can say is that the Belgrade Waterfront, if built, will affect Belgrade`s identity and its society, whether for good or bad I leave to everyone to judge by themselves.