European Architecture Students Assembly
Kragujevac, Serbia
2019 - 2021
EASA Reality was conceived as the 2021 edition of the European Architecture Students Assembly, a two-week international architecture gathering bringing together 150 students and practitioners from across Europe. Initiated through the winning host proposal presented at INCM in Trpejca, North Macedonia, in 2019, the project was developed and curated around the theme of reality.
The conceptual framework explored reality as a multifaceted and unstable construct. Through workshops, lectures, discussions and spatial experiments, EASA Reality approached architecture as a medium through which multiple realities could be examined, constructed and experienced.
Event —
European Architecture Students Assembly (EASA), 2021
Location —
Kragujevac, Serbia
Team —
Organizing team: Marina Urošević and Elena Džinović,
with Luka Šmišek, Šejla Župljanin, Boban Živanović, Tamara Nešić and Ana Vučeta
Award —
First Prize, Experiment in Architecture
Architecture Salon Belgrade, 2022
Photos —
Teodora Sekulić , Marko Mareljica
WORKSHOPS
Workshops and Tutors
A.B — Louis Koseda, Fran Edgerly, UK
Dumb Emancipatory Housing — Sebastian Bietenhader, Matthias Moroder, AT/CH
easa.tv — Petar Vukobrat, Sotiris Frankos, RS/GR
Hindsight and the Proportions of Attention — Andreea Samoila, RO
Living in the Cloud or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet (Online) — Mariia Samahala, Kateryna Kukelko, UA
neotribe — Saskia Gribling, Alexandre Sokolov, IT/LI
Oblique Realities (Online) — Areti Kotsoni, Christine Strantzali, GR
Portal Alchemist — Özüm Ezgi Satılmış, Samed Kaya, TR
Pyramid Schemes — Gustavs Grasis, Mariya Radeva, LT/BG
Remember Me? – Layering the Sokolana Building — Aleksandra Pešterac, Natalija Bogdanović, Maja Ivanović, RS
(re)start (re)boot override — Jack Prendergast, IRL
Shatra — Miloš Jokić, Ana Šabanović, RS
The Giant Puppet Workshop — Joe Ridealgh, Polly Elizabeth, UK
to make is to take — Ajna Babahmetović, Adna Babahmetović, AT/BiH
(un)controlled — Teodor Uzunov, Nikol Decheva, BG
Until The End Of The World — Filip Prica, Duška Prodanović, RS
Lecturers
Indy Johar — Co-founder, Dark Matter Labs
Daria Kovaleva / Werner Sobek; Institute for Lightweight Structures (ILEK), University of Stuttgart
Neven Mikac Fuchs — Professor at Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO)
Pavle Stamenović — Architect at Raster Collective; Lecturer at University of Belgrade – Faculty of Architecture
Natalija Bogdanović — Architect at Addicted Design Studio; Lecturer at FILUM, University of Kragujevac
Jan Eugster — Art Fabricator, Gallerist and Founder, Eugster || Belgrade
Roger Boltshauser — Boltshauser Architekten, Zurich
Grupa Škart — Art and Design Collective, Belgrade
anicoworking — Transdisciplinary Design Studio, Berlin
Extinction Rebellion (XR) Serbia — Grassroots Climate Justice Movement
Ulice za bicikliste — Cycling Advocacy Association, Belgrade
Printed material
Jem Bendell — Deep Adaptation
The summer EASA gathering took place in the first vocational school in Serbia, established in 1854. The building has been abandoned for several decades and left to decay. The focus of the workshops and the research territory was the neighbouring, likewise abandoned, Prince's Arsenal (Knežev Arsenal), a former military-industrial complex founded in 1853. It is recognised as an important industrial heritage site and an architectural ensemble of exceptional cultural value.
Kragujevac served as the first capital of modern Serbia from 1818 to 1841, while the nearby Šumarice Memorial Park marks the site where thousands of civilians, including hundreds of schoolchildren, were executed during the Second World War. Today, the Memorial Museum "21 October" preserves the memory of this tragedy.
Kragujevac's multilayered and complex reality, its historical presence and imagined future, made it a compelling location for the assembly. This region powerfully portrays the position of countries, nations and spaces that have found themselves, for centuries, in a constant state of transition. Here, transition itself becomes a space where past and present merge and remain physically present, where decay is not merely a trace of history but an active element of contemporary reality.
ASSEMBLY