Architectural Historian
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Maja Babić is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, where she studies architecture history and theory at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. In her work, she focuses on the intersection of architecture and politics in the region of former Yugoslavia during the Cold War period. She studies the intertwined nature of architectural production and political events that took place in a socialist country “balancing” the Iron Curtain, torn between the East and West. In her desertion and her current work, she analyzes the post-1963 earthquake reconstruction projects and processes in the Macedonian city of Skopje that took place throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and as they collided with the Yugoslav nation-building project.
In the past years, Maja has presented papers at the SAH, EAHN and the University of Michigan conferences, and she has co-chaired a session “Politics of Transformation and Continuity” at the 2017 SAH Annual International Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. She has been the recipient of numerous research awards, fellowships, and travel grants, and this year, she continues to conduct her fieldwork in the Balkans.
The history of the reconstruction of the Macedonian capital Skopje, after a devastating earthquake in 1963, is at this point firmly associated with the role played by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange and his Brutalist contributions to the cityscape. But Maja Babić turns her attention to the Ottoman heritage of the city, which she argues was largely disregarded in Skopje’s efforts to assert its “political modernization.”
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