kuda.NAO is joint initiative of kuda.org and The NAO - architectur group, whose work is dedicated to variability and materiality of architecture and media.
STADIUM CULTURE is a current project to renovate and expand an existing open handball stadium located in Novi Sad to become an electronic youth center and event place. The main challenge in this project is to initiate the force of youth culture in a city that had plenty of state support during both the Serbian&Yugoslav Kingdoms before the WWII and the Socialist era after WWII. The damaging decade of nationalism and crisis in Serbia during the ’90s resulted in the total neglect of both official and unofficial institutions for the youth, now yielding dangerous outcomes. From the beginning of the 20th century both Western and Russian building types were modified to create community athletic space for youth and workers of Novi Sad. Later during the reign of the late Tito between WWII until the early 1980s a number of institutions supporting culture were initiated. Compared to the number of youth organizations in Novi Sad at the time of Tito’s death in 1980 (48), today’s figure (3) demonstrates a devastating score. The few that struggle to remain are the scouts and ecological initiatives. A logical but unfortunate outcome of this situation is the recent shift of young people towards political extremisms.
We propose a hybrid program for the STADIUM based on the difference between the two central agents for youth activity: sports and electronic media, lingering at loose ends in today’s transitional society. STADIUM is planed to create an identity that engages some positive elements of the socialist past while defining urban future on some new terms. STADIUM needs to materialize the city’s situation of being in a complex transition space lingering at the outer edge of the European Union. It is meant to become a dialogic diasporic public space bringing young people together virtually, as well as in person, to participate in the social and political impact of new technologies and in sports, play, and friendly competition. Architecture takes clues from a flow of alliances that a Center for New Media in the city had and has to make in order to pursue this project towards the construction and it combines the innovations of long lost modern architecture with emerging identity politics of the electronic media.
NAO = Normal + Architecture + Office, is practicing contemporary architecture, urbanism and conceptual art practice. NAO are Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss , Edwin Thaddeus Pawlowski and Katherine Carl. The past and present collaborations include: Richard Gluckman, Emir Hadziahmetovic, Thomas Julliard Zoli, Ivan Kucina, kuda.org, Jenny Holzer, Miodrag & Ruzica Jovanovic, Camila Levi, Kyong Park, Marjetica Potrc, Sima Ruston, Ivana Sovilj, Natasa Teofilovic and Sabine von Fischer. Interns include: Kevin Kehler , Joseph R. Roumeliotis , Andreja Miric, Dejan Mrdja, and Dubravka Sekulic .
NAO, 147 Essex Street, New York, NY 10002, USA; tel. +1.212.785.0781, fax. +1.212.505.1648, thenao@thenao.net, www.thenao.net
