On Tuesday, on the occasion of the anniversary of the death of architect Dragoljub Bakić, the New Optimism movement launched an initiative to name a street in Belgrade after him.
"Rarely any articulate activism on various topics could have passed without his participation, but regardless of the fact that he was obsessed with the environmental problems of our society, he shared his concern for other problems with us in addition to those topics," New Optimism said in a statement.
The Belgrade committee of the Zajedno party also launched a petition to name a street in Belgrade after Dragoljub and Ljiljana Bakić.
Architect Dragoljub Bakić, who was also a member of the Ecological Uprising and the "Moramo" coalition in whose campaign he participated, died on February 13, 2023 in Belgrade, at the age of 84.
He was born in 1939 in Kragujevac, and graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Belgrade in 1962.
He is the author of numerous buildings and urban units in Serbia and Yugoslavia, as well as in Kuwait, Zambia, Iraq, Zimbabwe, the Republic of South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bulgaria, Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Malaysia, Venezuela and Japan.
In recent years, Bakić has been a harsh critic of investor urbanism in Belgrade.
"Since 2012, public interest no longer exists in Belgrade, it is dead. There is only rampant government, despotism that can be seen in all spheres of life. And perhaps this profession of mine and urban planning have shown it most nakedly," said Bakić in an interview for "Vreme" three years ago.
He particularly criticized the Belgrade on Water project.
"Belgrade on the water is a place where catastrophic mistakes are made: urban, architectural, traffic, infrastructural, ecological, socio-political, sociological, huge economic mistakes..." Bakuć wrote in the text "Construction monsters on the banks of the Sava" published in "Vreme".
"At the first news about this project, in February 2014, both professional architectural associations - the Association of Architects of Serbia and the Association of Architects of Belgrade - immediately publicly objected, demanding that the valid General Urban Plan of Belgrade be respected and that an international urban-architectural competition be announced. Those 3,5 billion euros were thrown in the face of the architects and threatened to keep quiet. That naive story about big money dissipated like a soap bubble when the Public-Private Partnership Agreement between the Republic of Serbia and a private entrepreneur from Abu Dhabi finally came to light, in which it is written that it is actually 100 (hundred) times smaller sums, because the entire project is implemented according to the principle: build a house, sell it, and then build the next one from the money collected in this way. It remains a great mystery why the authorities on the Belgrade on the Water project demonstrate such persistence in making professionally disputed and harmful decisions, willingness to break the law, and such obstinacy and arrogance, for the sake of the interests of a private person," wrote Bakić.
He warned about the conditions in which builders work in Belgrade on the water.
"And so the Dark Vilayet continues to successfully hide its secrets." He hid from the public when he laid the foundation stones, he hid the trams from the public when he signed the Treaty, and he continues to hide his secrets. Thus, it still hides the remaining 200 pages of the contract, which remained untranslated into the Serbian language; he still hides his "complete idiots" from Hercegovačka Street; he still hides how much money and whose money has been spent so far on that construction site where the mud of Bara Venezia was reluctantly concreted; the most important thing is still hidden - how much will it all cost Serbia in order to get its measly 32 percent of ownership, while everything is decided by an Arab entrepreneur who was given 68 percent of ownership and, in addition, the most valuable central city land was given to him completely free of charge declared EXTERIORIALITY" he wrote in the text ""Tamni Vilajet - Belgrade on the water".
Dragoljub Bakić was a member of the Academy of Architecture of Serbia. He is the winner of the Architecture Salon award for 1974, 1976, 1978 and 1991 and the winner of the Grand Prize of the Association of Architects of Serbia in 1994.
