HOUSING.YU – Right to Housing: the Production of Spaces of Everyday Life in Yugoslavia (1945-1991)

The research conducted under the project „Right to Housing: The Production of Spaces of Everyday Life in Yugoslavia (1945–1991)“ explores the production of everyday living spaces in Yugoslavia (1945–1991), which still constitutes about 60–70% of the current housing stock of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. The project employs a comprehensive, interdisciplinary and methodologically innovative approach to the actions of the state, urban planners, architects, contractors and citizen-users. The aim is to understand the critical phenomena of mass housing in the socialist state, including its production, policies, estate development, citizen participation and related knowledge exchange between Western and Eastern Europe.

Yugoslavia carried out three political-economic and housing reforms with an aim to generate legislation and implementation, as well as material and professional frameworks for mass housing, experimenting with different forms of standards, financing, organization of production, and ownership. In these overlapping processes, it relied on the inherited pre-war and then-contemporary practices from the East and the West, mediated by dynamic knowledge exchanges. Despite the ideological differences of these three systems, they shared the principle of social justice and public responsibility in the issue of social security of citizens. These reforms led to an increase in housing standards, the quality and number of housing units, and the standards of development of housing estates.

Through four research directions aim of the project is to critically question and understand the phenomenon of mass housing in a socialist state, including its urban and architectural production, professional discourse, state and professional policies and organizations, as well as forms of citizen participation, considered in the context of dynamic international exchange of knowledge.

Architectural and urban discourse of housing
Housing and participation of self-governing citizens
Housing and political-economic reforms
Housing and knowledge exchange – between the East and the West

Research on the actions of the state, urban planners, architects, contractors and citizens-users is approached in a comprehensive, interdisciplinary and methodologically innovative way.

The project includes the further development of the VISart database and information system, which was established as a digital resource and research tool within the scientific competitive projects ARTNET (2014-2018) and GLOBE_Exchange (2020-2023), carried out at the Institute of Art History with the financial support of the Croatian Science Foundation. New modules for the standard of apartments, residential buildings and residential complexes are planned in further development of the system.

Follow updates on the activities of the research team members here.

Principal investigator

Dr. Tamara Bjažić Klarin, Institute of Art History, Zagreb

Project team members

Prof. Dr. Igor Duda, Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism, Juraj Dobrila University, Pula; leader of research direction Housing and political-economic reforms
Dr. Lidija Butković Mićin, Departement of Art History, University of Zadar
Dr. Martina Malešič, Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana
Dr. Mejrema Zatrić-Šahović, International University of Sarajevo
Dr. Ljiljana Kolešnik, emerita, Institute of Art History, Zagreb; expert advisor for digital humanities and head of development of the VISArt system
Irena Šimić, Institute of Art History, Zagreb; associate for digital humanities and application of open science concepts

Project associate

Prof. Dr. Art. Anja Planišček, Fakultet za arhitekturo, Univerza v Ljubljani, Ljubljana

Host institution
Institute of Art History, Zagreb

Partner institutions
Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism, Juraj Dobrila University, Pula
Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana

Project acronym: Housing.Yu

Project duration: 2025–2030

Project ID: ERC-CoG No. 101171985

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Project is supported within Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council under the program Horizon Europe.

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