Life in the New: Julijana Kušević

Just as the motorway bends slightly southeast towards Belgrade from Nikola Tesla airport, one can spot the crown of the Western City Gate from about two kilometers away. The looming tower reveals itself when approaching; A concrete high-rise stretching roughly 120 meters to the sky.

It’s one of those buildings you can say “you won’t miss it” about and actually mean it. It’s made of two segments linked together by an enclosed footway – one, a residential block, the other, an office building. Above it, a digital display switches between showing the date, the time, or simply “Genex.” 

People in the neighborhood say they don’t need a clock at home because “this one is more reliable.” Silo-like structures containing staircases flank each side of both buildings. On top of it all, literally, a UFO-looking construction is resting. A touch of futurism.

Julijana Kušević marks assignments in the dimly lit living room. She works as a German teacher at a French school and as a French teacher at a German school. Her daughter is doing her homework in her bedroom. Her mother is watching tennis on television in her room. She slips in a German word every now and then, like Außenhandel, Kran, Schaukel, and “Egal, as we say.” She lived and studied in Munich, and her father now resides there.

“A benefit is a fantastic view over Belgrade,” Juliana says, “and you can’t see what your neighbors are up to.” The all-woman household of three generations Kušević lives on the seventh floor of the 30-story residential part of the building. “This is the better side; you get the sun from the east. It wakes you up, and in the afternoon, you have your peace.”

Julijana’s firsthand experience from living there since the building was finished in 1979 (“It was summer when we moved in”) doesn’t necessarily reflect the view of the many people who admire the raw concrete surfaces of the brutalist architecture style.

“At that period, back in the seventies, residential buildings in reinforced concrete used to be a symbol of progress! It was a privilege to live there,” she says, adding, “Now they’ve become history. Most of these houses are neglected in every way.” She doubts that the government is inclined to address the issue.

And she has a point. Approaching the Western City Gate on foot, a structure resembling a miniature amphitheater looks like a modernist half-arena that is more in ruins than the Colosseum itself.

At the tower’s frontage, water heaps in large puddles, orange tiles are crushed or missing, and weeds break through the tilework. Graffiti, like doctors’ signatures, makes up a large part of the graphic expression.

Still, there might be some hope left for the high-rise: In 2023, it was up for discussion whether the government should buy the building and transform it into an “oasis of spirit, culture, and architecture” and change its name to Tesla Tower.

The tower was subject to criticism and objections even before its construction. Those opposed would probably be fonder of the original outlines in the architectural competition: A 12-story building, also part office building, part residential.

In an interview in 2013, Mihajlo Mitrović, the architect and mind behind Genex, said, “On the same location, I arbitrarily built two buildings, residential and commercial, which are connected at the top,” and “I believed that it was a good solution and that these houses would be a recognizable sign of Belgrade, which they have been for decades.” The Planning Commission initially disagreed with his ambitious plan, but he eventually persuaded them.

The building is considered a landmark. If you turn around in almost any part of Novi Beograd, you will likely see the prominent feature in the city skyline. In late 2021, the government declared the tower a cultural monument.

“There are many, many other buildings which I would prefer to have the status as a cultural landmark,” she laughs, “but OK, this is something special. There is only one. This house needs protection. For several years, it used to be the tallest building in the Balkans.”

The sun has set, and Juliana’s mother has fallen asleep in her room; grunts and thudding pops of tennis balls from the television serve as relaxing white noise.

From the open window in the living room, a constant hum of cars seeps into the room from the highway, an arterial thoroughfare that stretches from northwest in Slovenia to the southeast of North Macedonia via Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Belgrade. 

Volunteers organized through youth work brigades had an integral role in building the road, which in 1950 was a symbol of socialist Yugoslav identity. It bore the symbolic name ‘Road of brotherhood and unity’ to reflect the unifying principles that brought all the republics of Yugoslavia together.

The highway passes closest to the office building of the tower, previously owned by Generaleksport, hence the Genex nickname. After going bankrupt in 2015, the office building, ever since obscured by advertising banners, has been put up for sale several times with no success.

Office spaces are currently leased out to minor companies that come and go, but only up to the 6th floor – water and heating are turned off on the floors above.

“People say the whole building was supposed to be a business building, and that’s why you can’t open the biggest window,” Julijana says. Moving in made the window hard to clean. “Some cleaned them with extended mops,” she explains, “but my mother used to step out on the concrete stool and clean them from the outside!” 

It was an attraction for the neighbors, but at one point, they agreed that she should stop risking her life for polished windows. “I was dying every time!”

Prints from Life in the New

View the price list for prints from my ‘Life in the New’ book project here.