A meeting/discussion with Alain Charrei, an architectural historian

Is it possible to “rehabilitate” a capital which is caught between an utopia and the reality. This question hides in itself the issue of heritage, and not only hides it but also changes its definition.

Indeed, if we do not attribute to heritage the function of selecting what should be preserved and what should be ruined but rather assign to it the function of “rehistorizing” the  material and symbolic reality, in this case only New Belgrade might be able to acquire a meaning corresponding to its history.

By “rehistorizing” we mean embracing  “the history of your history”. This sphere not only concerns historians but also any citizen and family. To revalue urban areas does not entail being content with cleaning up the dust of history from the frontages of buildings and modernizing them. It rather means returning the area to one’s own memory and restoring the dignity of people who came to live there 50 years ago.  It also means accepting the fact that, in the context of large-scale architecture, urban areas teach us a lot about history and our relationship with it.