Symbiosis 5 – Sustainability

Symbiosis And Its Critique Of The Contemporary Interpretations Concerning The Term Sustainbility

Ksenija Bulatović, Ksenija Bunjak, Saša Naumović, Dara Fanka

At the previous STRAND conferences authors presented the idea of Symbiotic architecture and discussed it against the backdrop of contemporary organic architecture, Modernism movement, modern technologies etc. Along with the practical design, authors are deepening theoretical research of the Symbiotic architecture, this time discussing it through the critique of the contemporary interpretations concerning the term sustainability. 

They decided to deepen their research, to go back to the roots of contemporary organic architecture and analyze similarities and differences between architecture of Modernism and Symbiosis.

Harmony between people, between man and nature, and between man and his home started to fade. Social gap between managing strength and managed mass has deepened. The understanding of the freedom as the supreme human right has changed. Architecture of Modernism aimed to restore this freedom and focused on the idea that the crisis of the freedom stands also for the crisis of the creativity. Are we today reaching the similar crises? What are the parallels between the contexts prior to the age of Modernism and the age of Symbiosis? The paper will discuss these questions.

Regardless to the differences between rational and organic approach, the new architecture of Modernism had a unique aim – to represent a society and its critical thought based on the idea that everybody are equal and freed from limitations imposed by the nations, classes etc. Uroš Martinović said that everything that a man has built, he did it following the image of his own being. Every action reflects our characteristics as an individual and as a social being. Light, air, water, or in other words the natural surroundings represent more than just a formal guidance in architecture. They are rather life requirements and elements that define human existence and their architecture both in Modernism and Symbiosis.

The aim of this research is to define the similarities and differences between Modernism and Symbiosis; to learn from past knowledge in order to improve our future actions.