The Sight of It, Translated as Home
Maša Seničić
I wished to begin with, “when I saw it for the first time,” but I don’t know if I even have a
recollection of looking at the building with intent before, if I had ever paid particular attention to
its monumental nature, to its allure, or its importance. That knowing gaze came much later,
along with my admiration for architectural devices, and as the words heritage, socialism, export,
edifice found their way into my vocabulary. Does this building have material fullness, or are its
twin parts connected by the route of an infinite touch? This is, again, a question that only
becomes possible after acquiring a certain knowledge about the common shape of things: the
building is one, not two, as I had seen many times.
I do remember its silhouette, the remarkable conjoined structure, which in my tiny mind meant:
“I am home.” In my brain, its two legs stood on opposite sides of the highway, the passerelle
that connected them hanging perilously over the road. I never really questioned this fabricated
image of my father driving the family car through the building. I was sure that everyone else
entered Belgrade in the exact same way. It was only after acquiring a driver’s license that I
came to realize that the Western City Gate is not a gate at all. It is a sign, a symbol of entrance.
And while its two sides certainly embrace each other through the panoramic passerelle, their
ambiguous legal boundaries are proof that they are inseparable. A child isn’t aware of
misunderstandings underneath the Tower of Babel but still looks up in awe. It’s impossible not to
raise your head while situated underneath the Genex Tower, and what I’m certain of is that
everyone lifts their heads in the same language.
The priceless apartment right underneath the rooftop, behind door number 119, has been sold
along with its inhabitants, and even though it is part of the residential building, it engages in thenarrative of the whole. As in all other histories, there are many numbers that bear witness to thenow rotten trade company: tonnes of meat exported to South America; thousands of peopleeating their first ever hamburgers in Belgrade at the end of the ’90s; the millions earned andinvested; the rows upon rows of employees. And then the inventory, always so much inventory, systematically named and registered, some of it still lying around the spaces for which it wasn’t initially designed. The earth-colored tiles, in their original arrangement, will be leaning against the walls of the building until its skin is peeled from the inside. These rows of small square
surfaces are also immovable cultural heritage, that is, until I take one, already broken off, and bring it with me. I changed apartments, and this small object, whose production and trajectory I know nothing of, followed me. I could have found out more about it, of course, but as I glance at it, I simply recognize it as home. This has to be enough.
The myth around the Genex building was so strong that I never once tried walking into the well-
guarded place until I found out it would be sold. I must have thought such a symbol is unsellable
or unsolvable – if I’m to obey the benevolent autocorrect on this device. It finally dawned on me
that this might be my last chance to see it from the inside. As we walked through the sunlit
lobby, only the plants seemed alive, occupying huge windows and a circular upholstered bench.
The sound of a blues composition written almost a hundred years ago broke through the space,
followed by an opera. I soon learned that the security guard behind the desk was the one
playing them. Two crossed hoses were waiting to perform their duties, spread out on floor tiles
reminiscent of seaside resorts. The humidity in the air was overwhelming but not at all
surprising. The place had become a self-regulating ecosystem that had given up on being
watered and cultivated.
The warm winter sunset falls on the faded colors of the carpet and woodwork, and the smell of
apple pie and local wine, served with lunch in 1997, collide with stale air. On the dusty
restaurant floor we find a menu written by hand on a white sheet of paper. I recognize the neatly
arranged pastel chairs from fashion photoshoots that used Yugoslavian iconography as a
convenient basis for set design, more or less harmlessly commodifying its legacy. A state within
a state, as one famous description of this now derelict national enterprise went. Stale air is what
I think to myself once we go down the infinite stairs, stale within stale within stale. Thousands of
small dead insects all of a sudden become a reminder that there was once a swamp here.
Before I learned about it through archival footage, I vividly visualized my grandmother’s story
about driving to university through sand and mud. New Belgrade was just being constructed,
and her students’ home was, still is, right next to the plot of land where the Genex building was
soon to be built.
In one of his essays, brilliant Belgrade architect Bogdan Bogdanović wrote that waking up from
a dream is, in essence, walking through a gate of oneself. On the other side of the ocean, the
image of the unforgettable two-sided structure has been chosen to represent Yugoslav brutalist
endeavors, celebrating them from the poster for the exhibition held in the world’s most famous
museum of modern art. And then I understood: passing underneath the Western City Gate isn’t
entering through a gate as such; it’s an act of waking up.
There are 2500 telephones in the newly opened venture. I imagine the simultaneous ringing and
all the people answering in a sweat. They are almost suffocating behind windows hidden behind fabric — fabric draping the building with a huge advertisement as I write. Or, the ringing becomes unbearable, and the fact that no one is answering causes an earthquake so forceful that the building starts to tremble. There are a number of ways to demolish a skyscraper, and the preferred, safe method entails the demolition crew using a high-reach mechanical excavator with a long arm to pull down the upper floors. I can see it, the floors gradually collapsing onto the highway, piling up to become an accidental dam that would divide the once-swamp.
Everything I know about this place merges in a chronologically incomprehensible disarray.
The city and a tower and a tower and a tower
All cities have towers is a thought that couldn’t have been mine. Yet, it stayed within me while
visiting numerous Western cities in which towers stand as incomparable hiding places and
precious lookouts. Whether cathedrals or high-rise buildings, these vertical organisms,
uninterrupted upward structures and consequences of heavenly aspirations articulate our wish
to resist gravity and gain an omniscient perspective. Erecting a tower means subduing the
surface, and a city — if it wishes to be taken seriously — must make an effort to do so.
Disturbingly, when I type “tower” (kula) in the search bar, the map of today’s Belgrade leads me
to the 168-meter structure built recently on the banks of the Sava river, which changed the city’s
landscape irretrievably. It was advertised as the literal pinnacle of this violent attempt to push
the capital towards its river by bringing flashy catering and service facilities directly to the
water’s edge. Another tower, 155 meters tall, is part of a business-residential complex in New
Belgrade. And yet another, which arose on the site of the building of the former Federal Ministry
of the Interior Affairs, destroyed during NATO aggression. The ruin stood there for a long time before being replaced by an architecturally unremarkable pillar, indistinguishable from others found in similarly inscrutable and devastated surroundings.
As far as I am concerned, this city has only one tower. Its foundations were laid in 1971, and at
the time, it was the tallest building in the region, rising 118 meters into the sky. The public was
hostile to the idea of constructions this distinctive, and the archival documents testify to the
citizens’ fierce opposition, disagreements and disputes. Mihajlo Mitrović, the architect, was
persistent in his idea, providing exhaustive explanations of his visionary piece of work. Genex
has always had two poles, one dedicated to business transactions and the other, an ordinary
residential building. Generalexport, whose name these inseparable entities bear, was the largest
company born from the Yugoslav economy, and the tower – in an effort to make evident what
kind of establishment it was – had to be more intricate, more advanced and sophisticated than
any building before. The first smart building in the Balkans, reads one of the newspaper
headlines. Look above, another headline insists. I take it seriously, my eyes reaching
instinctively for the clock that hasn’t worked for decades but suddenly shows the right time, right
before the building was to be sold. The building went for a ridiculous price, sold along with the
clock’s digital display showing hours and minutes. I do know that time precedes place, at least
grammatically, and as I look at the clock from the highway, I notice that time precedes the city as
well.
The city and the tower is how the Bible chronicles the location of the notorious act of hubristic
defiance to God, but it is not solely in Christian mythology that this desire for the unattainable
exists. Outside of Babel and significantly further away, battles have also been fought from and
against age-old and contemporary towers. There have been giants reaching for the sky from the
mountains and builders reaching for the celestial heights, tragically ending up under the scaffolding. Maupassant famously took his daily meal at the Eiffel Tower as it was the sole Parisian restaurant from which the tower itself could not be seen.
On an island deep in the Mediterranean, a tour guide once told me, “People go and leave,
towers stay.” While he was clearly referring to the ancient stone structures we were visiting, he
also showed me a picture that haunts me: between the imposing green hills, in the middle of a
lake illuminated through the clouds, sits the steeple of a church, the last remaining evidence of
former life. It is through the spire, this elongated extremity of a city, that the flooded area is
reaching for air. If it’s true that towers are all that will remain (as I was told and as this landscape
testifies), then if a violent and unexpected rush of water inundated Belgrade, the city would be
left with several peaks. Emphasizing the value of the Genex building prior to its sale, the current
mayor of Belgrade described it as the paradigm of development and the future. Yes, when it
finally rises back up from the next great flood, it will be the only tower fully equipped for dining.
Between Symbol and Symptom
Sonja Jankov
Yugoslavia had a unique form of socialism based on the policy of non-alignment,
cooperation with both Eastern and Western countries, the decentralization of political and
economic decision-making, and workers’ self-management which created social property.
This system was developed as a means of making a clear departure from Soviet ideology in
1948 following the Tito-Stalin split and the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform.
From that moment on, Yugoslavia strove to create a new identity that differentiated itself
from both Soviet socialism and the political and economic ideologies of Western countries.
Architecture played an important role in this process — not only by representing and
monumentalizing Yugoslav values, but also as a means of creating a new vision of society
and building international cooperation.
As with Yugoslav identity in general, Yugoslav architecture consciously
differentiated itself from Soviet Socialist modernism as well as from International
modernism, even though it drew most of it’s influence from the latter. It managed to
establish its own unique identity within the history of modernist architecture, and was
known for blending different elements to create dynamic architectural structures. This
meant combining mass produced and custom-made components, abstract forms taken
from International modernism, and elements representing both supranational/Yugoslavian
and specific cultural identities. The invention of the IMS construction system by engineer
Branko Žeželj in 1957 was a significant turning point for Yugoslav architecture. This
system, which consisted of prefabricated columns and panels made of reinforced concrete,
allowed for fast and high-quality mass construction while reducing the weight of buildings
by 30%. The IMS construction system was widely used across construction sites in
Yugoslavia and was also exported and implemented in many countries around the world,
particularly in non-aligned countries.
This system was used in most buildings in New Belgrade, a new, modernist city that
replaced marshlands, envisioned as the new capital of the new society. New Belgrade was a
specific building laboratory where prefabrication was combined with free expression to
create new architectural models of housing, working, socializing and governance. The
building presented in this book was the tallest constructed in the Yugoslav period.
Colloquially known as ‘The Western City Gate’ of Belgrade, it was described as the
“monument of the time in which it was created” (Kadijević, 1999: 92), symbolically
showing that Belgrade and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia belonged to
Western as much as to Eastern Europe. It was one of the most iconic buildings of Yugoslav
non-aligned socialism, but over time, it became associated with the bankruptcy of Genex
(the enterprise for which it was built), the break-up of Yugoslavia and the inability of the
transitional society to maintain it and give it a new purpose. Today, it is still recognized as
one of the best examples of Brutalist architecture in the former Yugoslavia and a landmark
of its specific Western-oriented socialism.
The economic reforms of the 1960s resulted in a ‘market-oriented’ socialism. They
primarily involved adjusting prices to the global market to boost the export of Yugoslav
products, and, in connection to that, expanding production and trade capacities. The economy was opened up to foreign capital, banks were given far greater power and resources, investment funds were abolished, business taxes were reduced and factories widened their capacities and production lines. Increased production for export required more investments and imported materials, leading to a rise in international loans. As a
result, “from 1964 to 1971, Yugoslavia's foreign debt quadrupled from $700 million to $2.7
billion. 90% of the debt and 95% of its service owed in convertible foreign currencies”
(Samary, 1988: 33).
Shortly afterward, in the 1970s, a strategy to develop the country and
simultaneously obtain foreign currency for debt payment started, resulting in the
reorganization of the Yugoslav economy and its international trade policy. Enterprises
were merged into complex associations of work, production, sales, and export to increase
exports, improve the profitability of export operations, secure cheaper import supplies, and
better organize these supplies. Additional goals were securing and investing in foreign
commercial and financial loans and contributing to the development of industrial
cooperation with foreign countries. One such complex association was Generalexport
(Genex), an enterprise for foreign and domestic trade, tourism and air transport. In 1973,
Genex included 109 production organizations of joint work, 1 soon becoming one of the
most successful Yugoslav enterprises.
By 1976, it had achieved almost 80% of its turnoveron foreign markets and had 60 representative points in 30 countries (consisting of1 In the agriculture and food industries (34 from 24 cities); the textiles, leather and footwear industries (14from 10 cities); the wood, paper and graphics industries (25 from 25 cities); tourist activities (16 from 13 cities); other branches of industry such as metal processing and shipbuilding (25 from 22 cities). Some of the largest production enterprises in the country merged into complex associations, including the Electronic Industry from Niš, Zavodi Crvena zastava from Kragujevac, Krka – Pharmaceutical and Chemical Products Factory from Novo Mesto, Chemical Combine, Chromos-Katran-Kutrilin from Zagreb, Galenika –Pharmaceutical Chemical Industry from Zemun, Jugolinija – Yugoslav Line Shipping from Rijeka,
Jugooceanija – Yugoslav Ocean Navigation from Kotor, Novkabel from Novi Sad, City Traffic Company
Belgrade (Generalexport, 1973). subsidiary companies, joint ventures and representative offices). 2 It represented more than40 companies from Europe, America and Japan whose products were often incorporated into Yugoslav products. These companies included Siemens (DE), General Motors
Corporation, (USA) and GoodYear International (USA, FR) (Generalexport, 1977: 6). It
imported products unavailable in many socialist countries, for example Courvoisier cognac,
Bacardi rum, Carlsberg beer, Swiss watches, French perfumes, UK whisky and tobacco
products from Austria, the Netherlands and the USA.
Genex was the main investor in the third expansion phase of the Zavodi Crvena
zastava factory, which produced FIAT cars under license. This expansion enabled it to
produce 500,000 cars annually and become “a permanent bridge to FIAT's markets in
Eastern Europe” (Gašić, 2017: 166). Through Genex, the factory established the joint
venture Zastava Car with a British partner, and the first Yugoslav vehicles appeared on the
British market in June 1981 (Gašić, 2017: 170). Genex also played a great role in Yugoslav
cooperation with the USA through a ten-year barter arrangement with the Occidental
Petroleum Corporation in 1984. As a result of this, the Yugo became the first socialist car to
appear in the USA. Through the firm Yugo America Inc., associated with Genex, a total of
140,000 Yugos were sold in the USA. At the height of its success in 1989, Genex reached 7
billion dollars in turnover, while Coca-Cola had a little over 8 billion, and Pepsi, due to its
long presence in the USSR, had 13 billion, increasing to 20 billion after the fall of the Berlin
Wall (Miladinović, 2023). As Genex had strong mediation skills and good business 2 These were located in Angola, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Finland, France, Greece, Netherlands,
Iran, Iraq, Italy (7 representative offices and 4 joint ventures with foreign partners), Jordan, Canada, Kuwait,
Lebanon, Hungary, German Democratic Republic, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Romania, USA (5 representative
offices), Federal Republic of Germany (8 representative offices), Syria, USSR, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden,
Great Britain (5 representative offices) and others (Generalexport, 1977). connections in many countries, its success would undoubtedly have continued if Yugoslavia had not disintegrated and if sanctions against it had not been introduced.
By the end of the 1960s, with Genex having over 30 representative points
worldwide, it had become clear that an enterprise of such importance required new
headquarters reflecting its complexity and status. With this in mind, architect Mihajlo
Mitrović designed the building presented in this book. The project for the building began in
1970, and it became operational in 1980. It is 124 meters high and consists of two vertical
blocks connected at the basement level and through a bridge at the top. One block has 30
stories and functions as housing. It comprises 184 flats (60 three-room, 60 two-room and
64 single-room) in which some Genex workers lived. The other block, 27 stories high,
contains offices, most of which are open plan. On top of it is a rotunda with a restaurant
that has a circular viewpoint, increasing the height to 39 stories. Although the restaurant
was designed to rotate, Genex decided not to install the necessary equipment for the
revolving floor to function (Kadijević, 1999: 71).
During the planning stages of the building, Mitrović encountered numerous
problems. Initially, his design was selected and awarded the first prize at an open
competition — the standard procedure for architectural and urbanistic projects in Yugoslavia at
the time. Although the competition did not specify any restrictions on building height, the
Belgrade Urban Planning Office later claimed that the building would be too tall and
insisted that the plans must be changed. Genex managers also required changes. Mitrović
defended his design, but at an advanced stage of the construction, an institution from
another city halted construction, claiming that raw concrete was not sufficiently fire-proof.
This was subsequently disproved.
Upon completion, the building could not obtain usageclearance until someone from the federal government designated it as the venue for the conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Mitrović, 1999: 179-180). The proposed third regional center with an annex to the building was never
realized.
The Genex building is considered to be one of architect Mihajlo Mitrović’s most
important works and one of the few Brutalist buildings in his extensive oeuvre. Mitrović
(1922 to 2018) was part of the first post-war generation of architects and played an active
role in reconstruction projects following the extensive damage caused by WWII. He
completed 112 architectural projects and 18 urban planning projects. He was a co-founder
of Projektbiro, along with Jovanka Jeftanović and Radivoje Tomić. He authored many
publications, including monographs, edited volumes, short reviews, and critiques, and also
served as a professor in the faculty of architecture in Belgrade. He built architectural
objects for almost all purposes, with the exception of medical facilities, due to the
prioritisation of technological and functional imperatives over architectural creativity in
these facilities (Mitrović, 1999: 178).
His approach to architecture was based on a synthesis of architecture, sculpture,
painting, and their methodologies. In some buildings he emphasized an international
stylistic component, and in others he focused on traditional ones. Some of his buildings
incorporated elements of brutalism, structuralist concepts enriched with postmodernism,
or hidden expressionism (Kadijević, 1999: 65). In the 1970s, he used sculptural expression
by combining different parts into an imaginative whole (ibid, 101), for example, adding
objects to objects in a structuralist and constructivist manner, not only as ornamentation
but as functional parts of the building.
The rotunda on top of the Genex building is an example of such an object added to
an object, reflecting Mitrović’s sculptural approach to composition. Due to the simple,
geometric, decorative elements surrounding the windows, the Genex building is also
described as “sculptural modernism” in architecture (Metzanov, 2014: 52). Additionally,
Mitrović integrated painting into his design of the building. One can see colorful murals by
Lazar Vujaklija (1914–1996) on the exterior walls and ceiling at the entrance, which depict
the building, information about the architect and the construction company Rad, and the
date construction was completed.
Despite facing difficulties with local architectural critics in the 1970s, the Genex
building received positive feedback from critics abroad. It was featured on the cover page
of the 1982 issue of the Swiss-French almanac ‘Architecture Contemporaine’, alongside the
Kamioka Town Hall by architect Arata Isozaki. Additionally, it was published in ‘National
Geographic’ in 1977 and presented on the front page of ‘Moscow Pravda’ in 1988 as “a high
architectural achievement and the business card of Belgrade” (Kadijević, 1999; 90-91).
Over the years, it has inspired many visual artists, film directors, creative industries, and
the general public interested in brutalist architecture. In 2015, the Generalexport
enterprise declared bankruptcy, with some of its former employees continuing to reside in
the building. Due to the building’s visibility across the city, it is considered one of
Belgrade’s most desirable advertising spaces and has been used to hang up massive
advertisements. Once the symbol and the headquarters of the country’s international
connections, it has become a giant billboard.
The building symbolizes the fate of Yugoslav self-management in a post-socialist
world. Self-management was what made Yugoslavia unique, helping to build the country and position it favorably on the world map. It was based on the Marxist idea that all means
of production belonged to the workers instead of the state or private owners. Additionally,
the workers decided how profits would be used within the enterprise—to expand
production, raise salaries and bonuses, build holiday resorts for workers at the seaside, or
have the highest building in the Balkans for its headquarters. It was because of this
organizational system that the workers of Genex had higher salaries than those of other
enterprises, and that Genex had a large amount of property (facilities, plots of land,
inventory, capital, and more). Moreover, the workers owned all of this property under the
system of shared ownership of social property. However, Genex went bankrupt due to the
sanctions and embargoes that were placed on Yugoslavia in the 1990s, along with
increasing debts and other factors. Eventually, it was privatized in a way that prevented the
former workers from accessing or benefiting from what was once theirs. Similar cases
across the region have led to lawsuits by former workers demanding that their rights not
be ignored, as many had gone without salaries, pensions, or social and health benefits for
years.
While the photographs in this book were being taken the building was sold to a
private owner and placed under preliminary protection as a cultural heritage site. These
images occur at a temporal distance from Yugoslavia, market-oriented socialism, and the
extensive global connections that Genex once established. Yet, as this book shows, this
period is not completely in the past. Its legacy lives on in the memories of those who
worked there, in traces of the ‘better days’ scattered around the building to be found as
future memorabilia or trash, and in the public's concern for the building's future and the
fate of its former workers. Despite being covered by banners advertising beverages,
watches, sneakers, phones, and other products—the same goods once imported and
exported by Genex— the building's characteristic shape can still be recognized underneath.
It guards over the past like a tower, but, as with all architecture, it has the potential to
outlive the nations and investors that constructed it. For this reason, its best days may still
lie ahead.
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