TWO TOWERS: RISE, HUBRIS AND DECLINE

Abstract

This work examines the process of the architectural spatialization of ideology in the context of the twentieth-century Belgrade downtown. The focus is put on the city's central urban, commercial and functional thoroughfare, marked by two simultaneously different and comparably similar skyscrapers from the 1930s and 1970s – The "Palace Albania" (1938-39) and The "Belgrade Palace" (1969-1974). These high-rise structures represent a conspicuously fascinating example of the complex identitybuilding processes in two radically different historical contexts which were based on the similar mechanisms of cultural opposition, difference and representation.