Metaarchitecture of Predrag Ristić: Bridging non-philosophy and hypermetaphysics

Abstract

This paper aims to research, critically interpret and synthesize the metaarchitectural work of Dr. Predrag Ristić, a Serbian and Yugoslav architect and artist (1931-2019). The focus is on Ristić's production of meta-architecture, exploring his role as an engaged individual who intervenes in an intellectually dissident manner beyond official academic institutions, while contributing to the cultural liberalization within the social context of the Yugoslav paradigm during the second half of the twentieth century. Metaarchitecture, in this sense, can be seen as a broader semiological construct encompasing the ability and will to create ontological signs, epistemological events or methodological objects that extend beyond the architectural domain into the realms of art and culture, shaping forms of social history and criticism. The analysis of Ristić's work will be carried out in two distinct directions, reflecting two phases of his creative activity, each associated with specific theoretical paradigms. Ristić's earlier phase during the 1960s and 1970s, marked by a techno-pessimistic and techno-critical observation of the world (from the Kajmakčalan church to several Thanatopolis projects), is analytically linked to non-philosophy as an anti-dogmatic phenomenological concept. On the other hand, his later creative aspirations from the 1980s are interpreted through his semioanthropological approach to the Mesolithic culture of Lepenski Vir, a subject of his PhD thesis, which connects to hypermetaphysics as a comparative conceptual formation.