Urban Regeneration in Subotica: Reconnecting Monument, Landscape, and Cityscape

Project by Desire Tilinger

"The city, that artefact, in the beginning a tool like any other ... began to turn itself into a tool of seeing and understanding the world, into a means of intelligence." If this is true, then the city requires a brain — an urban institute capable of interpreting its past and directing its future.

This urban regeneration "MONUMENT : LANDSCAPE : CITYSCAPE" project in Subotica, Serbia, addresses the lingering spatial and psychological impact of an unfinished modernist axis that has shaped — and fragmented — the city for decades. Positioned between monument, landscape, and cityscape, the proposal transforms an unresolved urban scar into a cultural and civic catalyst.

The Unfinished Modernist Axis: A Barrier to Urban Continuity

Subotica, located in northern Serbia near the Hungarian border, is renowned for its Hungarian Secession (Art Nouveau) architecture and richly ornamented facades. Yet beneath its historic identity lies the legacy of a 20th-century modernist intervention that was never fully realized.

Radijalac and Prozivka — two modern settlements built during socialist expansion — were intended to be connected by a grand urban boulevard cutting through the city. While Radijalac developed as planned, Prozivka remained spatially detached. The proposed axis stopped short of completion, leaving a rupture in the urban fabric.

This unresolved gesture continues to divide Subotica — physically, socially, and symbolically. The project identifies this unfinished axis as the primary obstacle to the city’s cohesive development and positions urban regeneration as the strategy for healing this divide.

From Monument to Urban Institute: Reframing Memory

Prozivka, whose name loosely translates to "roll-call," carries heavy historical connotations linked to wartime executions during World War II. Today, a park and monument mark this space. However, the surrounding urban structure lacks integration and civic vitality.

Rather than treating the monument as an isolated memorial object, the project expands it into a broader cultural landscape. At its core stands a new Urban Institute — conceived as the intellectual engine of Subotica. This institute serves architects, urbanists, designers, archivists, anthropologists, programmers, and citizens alike.

The building is not introverted or institutional in the conventional sense. Transparent, open, and porous, it invites public interaction. The surrounding park becomes an extension of civic life — a place where memory, education, and everyday activities intersect.

Urban Design Strategy: Stitching the Two Suboticas Together

The proposal works at multiple scales:

• Urban Scale: Completing and redefining the axis not as a rigid boulevard, but as a green, cultural corridor.
• Architectural Scale: Introducing modular pavilions, exhibition spaces, archives, and lecture halls.
• Landscape Scale: Transforming the central void into an active public realm.

Instead of imposing a singular monumental structure, the design unfolds horizontally — responding to the flat Pannonian plain. The composition exaggerates horizontality while punctuating it with rhythmic wooden structural frames that reinterpret vernacular porch ornamentation found throughout Subotica.

This translation of decorative wooden "lace" into a structural system bridges past and present — shifting ornament from surface embellishment to constructive logic.

Programmatic Intelligence: Architecture as Civic Infrastructure

The Urban Institute functions as a hybrid between archive, cultural center, research hub, and public forum. Its program includes:

• Urban research and management offices
• Exhibition and archive spaces
• Cultural and educational facilities
• Public pavilions and open-air gathering zones

By embedding these programs within a continuous landscape, the project dissolves the boundary between building and city. The axis becomes a living civic spine — not merely a transit route but a social condenser.

Constructive Expression and Spatial Experience

The exploded structural diagrams reveal a layered system of arches, beams, mounts, and roof elements that generate a dynamic canopy. In section, the wooden frames bend and converge, forming sheltered public zones beneath.

This structural rhythm creates moments of compression and expansion — guiding pedestrians through shaded passages, open plazas, and framed views toward the monument and surrounding neighborhood.

The architecture is both infrastructural and poetic: infrastructural in its modular repetition and material clarity; poetic in its reinterpretation of vernacular motifs and its commitment to civic openness.

Toward 21st-Century Urban Regeneration

Subotica’s challenge is not merely architectural — it is temporal. The city must reconcile its Art Nouveau identity with its socialist modernist layer and its contemporary aspirations.

By addressing the unfinished axis — the symbolic and spatial scar — this urban regeneration project proposes a way forward. It does not erase history; instead, it layers memory, landscape, and program into a cohesive civic framework.

In doing so, the project suggests that true urban regeneration is not about replacing the past, but about understanding it — and building the institutional intelligence necessary to navigate the future.

Monument becomes landscape. Landscape becomes cityscape. And the city, once fragmented, begins to think as one.