Arhitektonska enciklopedija Beograda

The Encyclopaedia of the 19th and the 20th Century Architecture of Belgrade is an extensive, three-volume, fundamentally professional and scientific work (1518 pages), that in an encyclopedic manner, through entries given in alphabetical order, and in a comprehensive way deals with the theoretical and historical passages of architecture through aberration angles focused at the architecture and the architects of Belgrade. 

ARCHITECTURE is a title of the first volume of this Encyclopaedia, and it contains the architectural topography, a presentation of its most significant buildings, from family houses, palaces and courts, to the first Balkanic thirty-story structures, and also the urban planner stratum shown in the ambiental pattern of old-town urban corners, tiny alleys, rare buildings all the way to metropolitan boulevards. 

The second volume: ARCHITECTS deals with the remembered, deserving and reputed builders of Belgrade and of Serbia, from folk builders and carpenters, to the educated and learned, who, through their work, and mostly in shy modesty still knew how to, and truly did, preserve and support its Godly gifts handed down - particularly the universe idiosyncrasy of Singidunum. 

The third volume is titled: TERMS. It comprises the definitions, given in quite a characteristic way, of the general terms from the technical glossary of the architecture, interpreted mostly through the experiences and performance of our Serbian builders. 

However ordinary the basic concept may be, and however safe a basis it provides for the development of a new and consistent meditative analytics - not all the roads of the new understanding of that complex "bastard" of engineering and art were easy and smooth, leading to firm and indisputable evaluations and respectable selection of the personalities and phenomena. With his remarkable erudition, not typical of young people, cast over three layers of interest, Bogunovic came to original literary solutions, and succeeded in creating completely innovative book of precious biographical, bibliographical, scientific, theoretical, essayistic and philosophic pages, an achievement without a precedent, we may safely say, in our end of the world. And even on a wider plane, when it comes to the third volume, as therein our national building values have been viewed as a part of the core of global European civilization. The Bogunovic's Encyclopeadia is certainly a result of such, obviously, gigantic work, written using an enormous amount of scientific and literary instruments, with exemplary scientific strictness and precision. But it has not been done with academic dryness, but with an exceptionally light, almost poetic language, rich, nice-sounding vocabulary, velvety and easy to understand, even when the switch is made to the philosophic interventions and subtle interpretation of the art history topics. 

Highly successful in the use of comparative resolutions, Bogunovic is applying the analogies from literature and philosophy, including the most topical literary events so that certain phenomena and their protagonists can be followed on a multitude of temporal levels. His evaluations and conclusions, Bogunovic states in a brilliant style, frequently through the little appealing essayistic fugues that one can read both separately and as coherent wholes: read and learn, as well as read and enjoy.

using the extensive and very scattered and unsystematic written material, Bogunovic incorporated into his Encyclopaedia the most important building phenomena and their results; some he redefined, added new lights, and some he introduced for the first time in, now visibly strengthened, written patrimonium of the Serbian culture and art. Therefore, The Encyclopaedia of the 19th and the 20th Century Architecture of Belgrade can irrevocably be considered a capital work of the Serbian architectural being. 

With such apodictic evaluations, one wonders why such a book has not surfaced before? The problem is in the everlasting apophasis: whether art historians value the creative work more competently and analytically, and therefore more reliably then the writing of the builders themselves - the creators dedicated to writing and creation. And always each will think the other is not entitled to the priority, overlooking that the classic asymptote is at play here - an unrelenting incompatibility. 

The case of Slobodan - Gisa Bogunovic  is quite specific. Grown and educated in the family of two top class Serbian artists, creators: an architect father and a sculptor mother, from his early days he inhaled that golden dust of creative winds, got a degree in philosophy and stepped into the esoteric of the spiritual phenomena of building; overwhelmed with the magic of architecture, he was preordained to write such a brilliant, highly professional and inspired book on architecture and the architects of Belgrade, as noone before him did, and it doubted that anyone ever will do after him. in all the logic, such author might come only second to him. 

Mihajlo Mitrović, honoris causa University of Belgrade

Written for UNESCO-ROSTE 2003.

Nikola Samardžić

Slobodan Giša Bogunović
Arhitektonska enciklopedija Beograda XIX i XX veka.
(I) Arhitektura. (II) Arhitekti. (III) Pojmovi.

Istorija beogradske materijalne kulture u svemu je neobična i izuzetna. Istorija Beograda je istovremena hronika iracionalne upornosti njegovih zajednica i beskrajne destrukcije. U tom smislu Beograd je, više nego kao stanište pouzdanog vizuelnog identiteta, opstao kao ideja, kao uzaludna iluzija, da će se u jednom zamišljenom vremenu učiniti stvarnom njegova unutrašnja mitologija, istorija jednog neobjašnjivog duha koji promiče razlokanim ulicama i oronulim razvalinama. 
Beogradska arhitektura sazdana je od istorijskih paradoksa. Urbani Beograd, koji zauzima svega nekoliko kvadratnih kilometara, prožet je istim saobraćajnicama kojima se koračalo pre dva i po milenijuma. Pri tom su zgrade starije od dva veka sasvim retke. Beograd je istovremeno ispunjen ljubavlju i mržnjom svojih autohtonih građana i pridošlica, i osvajača i branilaca. Napuštali su ga oni koji su ga najviše voleli, i u njemu se sklanjali oni koji ga potom nikad nisu razumeli. 
Lepota Beograda sadržana je u njegovoj neobaveznoj dijalektici, u  estetici nedovršenog, prljavog, nekad i ružnog, i u dubokom smislu njegovog upornog sivila. U Beogradu se nešto učini da je vreme potpuno stalo, dok jedan drugi tok, surov i neumoljiv, ruži trgove, satire parkove, razvaljuje pločnike, kruni fasade, ruši i ponovo zida. Revolucije su pokretale i sasvim naročite pojave, antiurbane i varvarske. Na već umorne, poklekle zgrade tovarili se novi spratovi, umesto izloga i lokala nicali su kiosci i ćepenci. 
I kad je  onu nepojavnu samo podrazumevala, enciklopedija beogradske arhitekture Slobodana Giše Bogunovića uspela je da obuhvati i jednu i drugu stvarnost. 
I mada se kretao jednim svetom koji obitava i sa one strane sreće i pameti, Bogunović je odlučio da ostane pažljiv i racionalan. Svestan da je Beograd, poput svih starih metropola, sam po sebi duboka misterija, i da u sebi krije duboke, strašne tajne, odlučio je da njegov prostor, vreme i duh savlada unutar tri organske celine. Kako je prva polica u knjižarama bilo koga velikog grada na čije sam se istraživanje upustio bila upravo ona s vodičima i sličnim priručnicima, ne bih mogao da se prisetim sličnog primera koji objedinjuje ulice i zdanja, njihove unutrašnje istorije i biografije njihovih tvoraca, i, ujedno, podseća na osnovna znanja koja dopunjuju čulne utiske lepote, sklada, monumentalnosti ili nečega sasvim suprotnog. 
Arhitektonska enciklopedija Beograda XIX i XX veka suštinski dopunjuje istorijski i savremeni identitet Beograda. Bez nje bi Beograd nastavio da zamuckuje nemuštim snebivanjem nad svojim lepotama i ruglom, jednom antinomijom svoje naročite estetike. Ona je vodič samim Beograđanima koji, verovatno, godinama, ili decenijama, okretno prikrivaju, i s tim se nelagodno nose, nepoznavanje sopstvenog grada. Za koji su vezali svoje, uglavnom tužne i nesrećne sudbine, oni koji su ga zauvek napustili, ne predviđajući da će ih njegov duh progoniti i sa one strane okeana, daveći ih nepodnošljivom nostalgijom. 
Arhitektonska enciklopedija Beograda XIX i XX veka trebalo bi da se pojavi u nekoliko izdanja. U osnovnom, enciklopedijskom, s kojim će Beograđani provoditi svoje opuštene trenutke, i ponosno je pokazivati svojim domaćim i stranim uzvanicima. U džepnom, u jednom tomu, poput onih večnih, neprolaznih knjiga koje su postale osnova identiteta celih civilizacija, kako bi je svaki Beograđanin imao uz sebe, u svakom trenutku. Sigurno i na disku. I u prevodu na najvažnije jezike, jer su prvi strani posetioci Beograda i oni koji će ga najpažljivije razgledati. 
Svaki grad u stanju je da o sebi posvedoči tek kad krene da raspreda sopstvenu istoriju, i ljudsku i materijalnu, i stvarnu i mitsku. Bilo je, međutim, i vreme da Beograd progovori jasno i neposredno. Arhitektonska enciklopedija Beograda je riznica i njegovih oblika, i nebrojenih sudbina vezanih za njegova zdanja. Svaka zgrada odnela je, samo prilikom njenog podizanja, najmanje jedan ljudski život. Istorija je, do Bogunovićeve Arhitektonske enciklopedije, bila više sklona da zapamti one koji su Beograd rušili, ružili i satirali. 

Beograd, 18. jun 2004. 
dr Nikola Samardžić, redovni profesor Filozofskog fakulteta Univerziteta u Beogradu, Odeljenje za istoriju