«I strongly believe that there is no moving forward if we ourselves do not challenge the conditions and practices of exploitation of our own labor.»
«I strongly believe that there is no moving forward if we ourselves do not challenge the conditions and practices of exploitation of our own labor.»
«I strongly believe that there is no moving forward if we ourselves do not challenge the conditions and practices of exploitation of our own labor.»
Hi, my name is Marija Marić. I am an architect and researcher, currently based in Luxembourg, where I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Master in Architecture Programme at Uni Luxemburg. My practice is organised around the questions of property, real estate, media, and the production of the (built) environment in the context of global circulation of capital and information.
That is a great question—I guess I need to go back 15 years to the time when I was still studying architecture in Novi Sad, Serbia. Our programme back then involved many interdisciplinary studios and courses which were bordering with questions of performance, theatre, ephemeral architecture, to name just a few. While still a bachelor student, I had a chance to work with different local NGOs and art collectives on projects that looked into the production of urban space through social, economic, political lenses. After my Bachelor studies, I enrolled into a new Masters Programme in Theory of Architecture and Urban Planning that just opened up at the University of Novi Sad, and after that to a second Masters of New Art Media at the Academy of Arts, also in Novi Sad—both giving me a framework to leave traditional architectural design as a given format to critically work with and unpack the politics of production of (built) environment. During this time, I shortly worked as a research intern in a small Viennese office called Expanded Design, on projects dealing with the histories (and futures) of social housing in Vienna. After Vienna, I moved to Zurich for my doctoral studies at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), at ETH Zurich, where grounds for what I am currently doing has largely been set-up, not just in terms of content but also method.
I started my PhD with a research on socialist Yugoslavia, but spent the first two and a half years questioning what my research practice could be. This period, characterised mainly by reading, conversations, and searching for my interests, and less by “production” expected in the PhD context (writing, giving lectures, etc.)—which back then I did not experience as exciting as I do now, but which was possible only due to very generous time and autonomy we as PhD students had—was really formative for my practice today. During this (and the following) period, my research on societal ownership started to serve more as a base for understanding the post-socialist condition that came to shape cities across former Yugoslavia. Planning and construction of one large-scale real estate development, later to be known as Belgrade Waterfront, embodying this condition in quite a radical form, was taking place at that moment. The clash of visions—whether of global real estate developers in finding another site for profit-making, political opportunism and the myths of nation-making through the construction of square meters, or those who resisted the project claiming the right to the city—opened up an understanding that built environment today is largely produced in what one might describe as a “real-estate-media complex.”
With this expression I refer to the collaborations between practices of real estate speculation and media expertise and technologies that help legitimise these practices. In this process, language plays a key role. The ways-of-talking help construct our ways-of-seeing, thus shaping the ways-of-doing. Reading real estate advertisements for Belgrade Waterfront set the ground for Real Estate Poetry—the project of claiming real estate language as a new literary genre that could help us deconstruct the developers’ visions of profit and growth, paving the way for my PhD research and setting the ground for many of the projects I am engaged in right now.
My doctoral dissertation, titled Real Estate Fiction. Branding Industries and the Construction of Global Urban Imaginaries looked into the role of communication strategists in the mediation, design, and globalisation of the built environment. It was developed under the supervision of Philip Ursprung at the gta Institute, ETH Zurich. I looked into how the role of a real estate media expert has emerged and grown in relevance over the last three decades, into a position in which it often competes with the role of architects and urban planners.
With communication preceding rather than succeeding architectural and urban design in the era of global circulation of capital, goods, information and people—storytelling and language have become design domains running in parallel with that of planning, while branding strategists themselves took over the development of architectural aspects of real estate projects, thus blurring the boundaries between the scopes of work of the two professions. Organised around the case of Belgrade Waterfront, a large-scale urban development conceived in the real-estate-nationalism nexus of the post-socialist Serbia—the thesis framed the two projects as designs of their branding strategists, and not their architects and urban planners.
My work was based on archival research, media analysis and many interviews conducted both with the stakeholders involved in the Belgrade Waterfront project’s development, as well as representatives of global agencies specialising in real estate branding and storytelling. To answer the second part of your question—I think this research has set the ground for most of my current projects, even when the relationship does not seem too obvious.
To me, this is all one project. I think that, in the end, it is about the questions we are asking and the positions we are taking as researchers, practitioners, activists, regardless of the form these questions take. I remember an incredibly inspiring lecture by Mierle Laderman Ukeles I attended in 2018 at the Migros Museum in Zurich, when this fascinating artist, whose work I was discovering at the moment, talked about almost six decades of so many different works she did—ranging from short manifestos to large landscape-art installations—all guided by a single question: the possibility of maintenance as a form of artistic practice. This was an example of how one’s work can keep research consistency and political relevance, but still operate across different media, audiences and scales.
This is an interesting question. Angelika, you were recently visiting us in Belval, I would love to hear your impressions! Luxembourg is a country that is developing very quickly, with a lot of new construction taking place on the greenfield and formerly agricultural land, with still not enough strategic consideration on its impacts—from resource extraction, to housing affordability, pollution, to name just some. This can leave a traumatizing effect both environmentally and socially. At the same time, there is a lot of willingness to challenge these, often real-estate driven, ways of working with the built environment, and I think this leaves space for hope and opens great opportunities to do things differently.
There are many, but one that I wish to emphasise here is: architects as workers. The conditions of our labor and the possibility of solidarity and care, which I think are just so intimately tied and inseparable from the way we operate in the world. I strongly believe that there is no moving forward if we ourselves do not challenge the conditions and practices of exploitation of our own labor, which are also so characteristic to the production of (and access to) space around us. In other words, instead of working with objects—working with subject(ivitie)s.
I would recommend to dig into critical thinking, as a tool to always try to challenge what is given. Consciously reflect on your own historical specificity of what does it mean to study, to be a student, both individually and as a member of a community of those who share your conditions (read bell hooks and Paulo Freire).Care, for yourself and for others. Don’t be scared of friction and disagreement. Learn how to work with words and across different media—a lot of “architecture” happens beyond the visual.
Project 1
Project 2
Live, Work and Play
Marija Marić
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eat, meet and play
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place to love, work and socialize with
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to Live, Work and Play
contemporary life, work and play
urban live-work-play lifestyle
Lock and leave with peace of mind,
Or stay and work and play.
Housing for a Lonely Generation
Marija Marić
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