International Conference and Exhibition ON ARCHITECTURE 2025 was presented at the Gallery of Science and Technology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 3-17 December 2025, in Belgrade, Serbia.|
Kulturni dnevnik (video)
Watch a feature of the Exhibition ON ARCHITECTURE 2025 on national broadcast.
Zlatni presek (audio)
Professor Ruzica Bogdanovic was a guest in an episode of Zlatni presek, a radio show that explores visual arts and art culture. The show is edited and hosted by Zoja Bojić.
Listen to the episode, in Serbian, about ON ARCHITECTURE 2025 on national broadcast Radio Beograd 2.
Read the English translation of notes from the episode below.
Thank you for the invitation, it prompted me to summarize, because the organization process lasts a year, and we have already submitted a proposal for a new event to be held December 2026. Why am I talking about the process – to emphasize the complexity of the work. In the application, the topic is already structured, in accordance with the topic, the selection of an international interdisciplinary team of members of the Scientific Committee who support the program and who are then reviewers of the conference papers. The program is discussed and supported first by the Department of Fine Arts of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and forwarded to the Department of International Cooperation because that is the nature of the conference. The exhibition preparation is managed in cooperation with yet another separate department of the Gallery of Science and Technology.
In February, a call for contributions is open, and in June the next important milestone is reached by submission of participants applications. The accepted applicants have a deadline in September to submit full works, either as conference manuscripts for blind peer review or exhibition works for the jury evaluation. It is a process that will take the next two months. And here we are in December with the realized event including the exhibition, conference and panel.
In the very concept there is this idea of holding the event in several places with additional institutional support and dissemination of information and knowledge -this year there was a Panel convened from Australia, integrated within the conference, as well as the exhibition of students’ works in Greece by the colleague in charge of international contact and promotion.
Since 2011, the Association (Sustainable Urban Society Association – STRAND) has been organizing exhibitions, conferences, publishing proceedings, catalogs, collections, and author monographs. The topics with which we affirm important questions are New Urbanity, a series of 4 conferences, then Going Digital, a series of 4 conferences, and On Architecture, a series of 13 conferences plus exhibitions, always with a focus on a specific topic. This framework of conceptual topics and especially topics about architecture points to the basic approach, which is interdisciplinarity.
In the digital age, the interaction of influences is inevitable, so the influences reflected in architecture is what is the focus of this year’s Crosscutting and Fusion of Disciplines conference. Another important approach is looking towards the future, even when we had the theme of Reworking the City Through New Architecture. Other topics include Learning Architecture, Facing the Future, Scale of Design from Micro to Macro, Challenges in Design, Philosophy of Architecture, up to the Facing the Future – New Challenges in the time of pandemic. Occasionally we return to the same topic after several years, for example same speakers areinvited to review what has changed in the past time. The second, i.e. this year’s, approach is a tribute to the authors who were the keynote speakers of earlier conferences, a choice also because their work and profile affirm the theme of interdisciplinarity and new approaches.
Topic Crossing and Fusion of Disciplines is a logical sequence of focused research on architecture. The subtopics that structure more closely are Phenomenology of architecture with a series of additional developments – dystopia, semiology, here and there and others, Art, architecture and new media, also developing the relationship and/or as well as photography as a medium or new software specifically AI that has flooded not only art, science, but also life, when I do reviews of works for magazines and other symposia I must be instructed not to use AI tools, and authors are allowed, with restrictions, then the topic Science, technology, art, architecture, where transdisciplinarity is explicitly highlighted, with the development of new smart models, new concepts and the last block are examples that integrate the assumptions made in the previous one and provide possible answers to the questions.
What questions – this is also one of the approaches in the concept itself are focused on three questions where we do not expect explicit answers, and which are certainly in more than 50 works of the exhibition and about 40 works at the conference, but the questions are of an open nature.
Question 1, what do we expect in architecture as an answer – a new materialization, a new relationship with the environment, with living organisms and microorganisms, are we building a relationship of agreement and coexistence, is it a holobiotic architecture and a probiotic city. Question 2, we are living in the anthropocene era, although it has not been officially declared. How to respond to the global challenges of climate, pollution of land, water, soil, visually, how to increase the population and disappearing resources, do we have recipes and answers in art and architecture.
Question 3, ubiquitous AI, what does it bring, what does it mean in the creative process in art and architecture, what are the limitations, what are the challenges. In this sense, authorities are invited to present their works, thoughts, answers, and presentations. We had the key themes/answers right away, in the phase of working on the concept we had in mind their works/answers to the theme, because the themes are avantgarde relevant answers in our practice and they were included as tandems to each theme, the probiotic concept, the AI concept, the Art+Science concept, for the reflection of the theme of the Anthropocene is another parallel to the brutalism in architecture.
The conference was attended by authors from 15 countries, USA, South Korea, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Lithuania, Norway, Greece, Turkiye, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, most of the works are by foreign participants.
A special segment is the Panel that originates from Australia, with panelists from South Africa, Spain, Serbia and Western Australia. The theme of the Panel is focused on education, different concepts around the world and specific topics given as an example of education. The exhibition in Greece is at the art faculty of the student class, this year it was not transferred to our exhibition because it is held later in December. Interest in the topics of the conference is the presence of listeners from the PhD class of students, which is important for them for information and dissemination of knowledge, as well as for us organizers due to the topicality of the topics and content.
We continue with information about the exhibition. About the process itself, the concept and how the realization goes, it was said, how the evaluation process goes. The selection of jury members are the authors of awarded works at previous exhibitions, as well as an additional member art profile, because there are such works in order to evaluate everything properly. The jury is international from USA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Norway and Serbia. Although I am present at the sessions of the Jury evaluatuion, in a role of an representative without a vote and not influencing the process, I would like to draw attention to the fact that they have firm recommendations, a whole series of evaluation criteria and the method of awarding points for each segment according to the criteria. They refer to originality, new ideas, respect for the environment, use of sustainable materials, applicability, messages they convey, aesthetics, way of presentation, etc.
The works are classified as a response to the theme, i.e. the same conference themes, 1 Phenomenology of architecture, 2 Science and technology and architecture, 3 New media art and architecture, and 4 Examples, and following the scope of the work, urban design, architecture, interior, are primarily in this theme. Many authors of the conference also have works in the exhibition. About half of the papers are in the topic 4 examples, the other part is in the three previous topics, Phenomenology of Architecture, Science and Technology of Architecture and New Media Art. In the explanation and in the title of the award, the jury emphasized the special contribution of specificities that were recognized and valued.
The added value of the exhibition is made up of the works from the Architecture Biennale that just ended in Venice, and literally the details of the installation, as well as the work from the Design Triennale in Milan. As the coincidence of the architecture theme of the Biennale is teamwork, interdisciplinarity, collective intelligence, it is not emphasized, but it is probably expected to be future-oriented, as logically follows the selection of award-winning works from the Biennale, as well as others.
The work from the Milan Triennale (SPIKA) is by invitation and out of competition, and the three Biennale works, presented at the exhibition, are classified in the same category Science, technology, art and architecture. The first-prized work that received the Micromacro award (Terram Intelligere: Interstitium) explores themes towards holobiotic architecture in the age of the Anthropocene. The other Bienalle work (Unraveling New spaces) received distinction for the advancement of science and technology, the fusion of art and science. Third work from the Biennale (İstanbul : A Way Out) is focused on the use of AI in the work and definition of city zones according to specific criteria.
Awards in the topic Phenomenology of architecture and specific interdisciplinary research, also awarded as a special recognition for media and representation, then the work of education, the first work after the start of work and a longer break of several months due to protests, significant because it is a witness of time, awarded for pedagogy and community engagement. A digression, although due to the significance and importance of recording the time – we had a similar one during the pandemic a personally significant achievement as a guest editor was a e double issue of the architectural magazine SAJ, how we conducted distance learning classes in various countries throughout the year. I consider it significant to record that moment in the collective work, the work was also presented at the conference. The award for the best work in the category of architecture and new media, as a special recognition for technology and innovation, and experimental research and two awards for Urban design and Interior design, i.e. exhibition design. Awards will be detailed by the authors themselves.