Lessons of Yugoslav Housing Economy in the Period of the First Five-Year Plan: Permeable Boundaries Between Tradition and Modernity

Abstract

During the first postwar decade, housing was a pressing issue in socialist Yugoslavia, further complicated by the isolation of the country in the aftermath of the Cominform Resolution crisis in 1948. Modernization and industrialization of the entire construction sector was planned, but it had to be postponed until the mid-1950s, when the circumstances were less dire. Because of this delay, innovations in housing architecture, urban planning, and technology came to a halt. Industrialization of the housing production and construction of new units in collective housing estates were considered the only credible path to alleviating the housing crisis. However, a different approach had to be taken during this period which was innovated through organized actions of the architectural and civil engineering profession. They relied extensively on the already existing housing types and on the traditional crafts, raised onto the industrial scale of operation and reorganized to enlarge the capacities and output. Their results achieved in the workers’ collective housing estates around the core industries and administrative centers, which have been almost completely neglected by architectural historiography, provide an invaluable insight into the humble origins of Yugoslav mass-housing architecture, most known for its achievements from the 1960s to the 1980s.