School of Architecture faculty member Dragana Zorić presented “Interior Urbanism: Education and Space in New Belgrade’s Superblocks” at the 2026 ACSA Intersections Research Conference: Urban Design Matters.
The research examines urban design strategies in New Belgrade’s superblock system, developed in Yugoslavia (now Serbia) primarily from the 1950s through the 1970s, through the distribution and spatial organization of schools and preschools. It argues that these educational buildings are more than autonomous architectural objects: their civic and spatial significance emerges from their position within carefully designed pedestrian interiors and their complex relationships with housing, landscape, and infrastructure. The study therefore approaches educational architecture through a dual lens—as autonomous architectural production and as a spatial artifact shaped by urban design—demonstrating how architecture and urbanism operated as mutually constitutive systems that together produced a coherent civic and spatial experience.