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Abstract
This thesis explores the correlation between architectural expression and political ideology in the work of two prominent post-World War Two Yugoslav architects, Dusan Grabrijan and Juraj Neidhardt. It focuses on their collaborative architectural writings, namely 'Sarajevo and Its Satellites' (1942), published during the pro-Nazi government of the Independent State of Croatia, and Architecture of Bosnia and the Way Towards Modernity (1957), produced at the peak of Yugoslav socialism. Both publications explored the relevance of the Ottoman/Islamic built heritage to the creation of a modern city but only in the latter did the authors identify this legacy as a suitable catalyst for the creation of a Bosnian modern architectural expression.
This change in position, the thesis argues, developed in relation to the 1950s nationalist discourse in Yugoslavia and, more specifically, the socialist led validation of the Bosnian Muslim community through the latter's official re-presentation from a religious to a national group. Grabrijan and Neidhardt's conception of the Bosnian Oriental expression as a 'synthesis of old experiences and new ways', similarly offered to resolve the long-standing problematic relationship between the architecture of Ottoman origin and an architecture deemed appropriate for a socialist society.
Architectural historians of Yugoslav modernism have recognised Grabrijan and Neidhardt's contribution to modernity and praised their capacity to connect Yugoslav modernism with the international agenda. However, the specifics of Grabrijan and Neidhardt's vision and the ideological connotations embedded in it have not been acknowledged. This thesis addresses that omission and shows that while there had been earlier attempts to integrate the Bosnian Islamic past into architectural debates, Grabrijan and Neidhardt's model of Bosnian Oriental offered a place for the Ottoman fabric within the new socialist architectural aspirations. The thesis foregrounds the important role that architecture plays in the process of construction, as well as destruction, of national identities.