The project of the Beko complex was first time
presented as the city’s new and happening centre at
the Belgrade Design Week in 2012. It foresees the
covering of 94,000 square meters and includes edge
residential spaces, galleries, offices, a five-star hotel,
a state-of-art congress centre, retail spaces and a
department store, etc., that will infuse a completely
new life to the historical quarter of Dorcol and form
a destination point on the direction between the
Belgrade Port, Beton Halla and Savamala.
The basics for the project can be found in the Master
Plan of Belgrade 2021, where the block is modified
in a city centre and which states that the earlier
detailed plan is not mandatory unless the changes
are in accordance with the plan. In addition, it can
be detected in the Development Strategy of the City
of Belgrade as well, as one of the priority projects
defined as the “Belgrade brownfields” (Ada Huja, the
Shipyard, “Beton” hall, etc.).
The initiative “Who build the city?” has actively
monitoring and reacting on the particular decisions
made by the city authorities, but their public
participation and action didn’t achieve any effects.
The most of the critics concerned the location
choice and the integration in the surrounding. On
their round table Megdan around Kalemegdan, the
initiative draw the attention on the limited time for
the citizens involvement in the planning process and
on a series of activities and decisions of the public
institutions that are against the public interest. The
general conclusion of this event was that the problems
were not in contempt of procedures and norms, but in
their deregulation and relativism, as well as the lack
of transparency behind the certain decisions.^53
The public opinion about this project is in general
divided. It varies from the excitement and the
highlighting of the avant-garde design of the well
known star-architects, to the complete disapproval
of the proposed solution and the criticism that this is
one of their prominent worse solutions. The positive
opinions follow mainly the logic of the neoliberal
urbanism and the argumentation that the project
would bring Belgrade a financial investment of
Milena Vukmirović
Fig. 7-9
Urban regeneration proposal by Zaha Hadid Architects.
(ZHA)