Architecture. – Since 2002, Belgrade has been at the center of a significant renaissance of Serbian architecture. Participation in the 14th edition of the 2014 International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale offered a good testimony of the new trends underway in a country that boasts an avant-garde design tradition. The main projects completed in the capital include: the Zora Palace (2005) by Spasoje Krunić, an office building with volumes entirely clad in aluminum; the university village of Belville (2009), which includes 14 residential and two commercial blocks, belonging to the Block 67 Associates group; the reconstruction of the telecommunications tower destroyed by the bombing in 1999 and officially reopened in 2010; the bridge of Ada connecting Čukarica with the new Belgrade, designed by Viktor Markelj and Peter Gabrijelčič, inaugurated in 2013; the Pupinov bridge that connects the city with the suburbs of Zemun and Borča, inaugurated in 2014.
Among the many projects still under construction are the new metropolitan railway, which is completely scheduled for 2021, and the redesign of the riverfront whose works, divided into four phases, should be completed in 2018. The latter, an ambitious project carried out thanks to massive investments by the United Arab Emirates, it includes offices, luxury apartments, hotels and shopping centers; inside, the Kula Belgrade tower (2015-17), designed by the US studio SOM, will be the most iconic building. Finally, the Beko Masterplan drawn up by the Zaha Hadid Architects studio is discussed which, on the area occupied by an abandoned textile industry, near the walls of the historic castle of Kalemegdan, proposed the construction of a new residential and administrative area.
Literature. – The wars of the 1990s and the political and social transition in the new millennium led to the marginalization of literature and culture in general. There is now silence from the media on poetry, which in the previous two centuries had a leading role in cultural changes officers. Yet valiant syllogues by various authors have been published: Milutin Petrović (b.1941), Dragan Jovanović Danilov (b.1960), Saša Jelenković (b.1964). Some of the thirteen poetry collections of Radmila Lazić (b. 1949), one of the founders of the magazine “Pro-Femina” and of the respective series of authors, have been awarded the most prestigious national prizes. Long is the list of young poets, born after 1970 and established themselves over the last decade, presented with biobibliographic notes in the two anthologies Prostori i figure (2012, The spaces and the figures), edited by Vladimir Stojnić, and Restart (2014), curated by Goran Lazičić.
In the prose of the new millennium, stories centered on everyday and contemporary reality are prevalent, at the center of the readers’ interests, the same reality that a few decades earlier the (post) modernists tried to mock, question or ironize. Among the most interesting writers: Svetislav Basara (b.1953), Dragan Velikić (b.1953), Goran Petrović (b.1961) are highly esteemed and translated into various languages, while less known abroad is Vladan Matijević (b. 1962), also a refined storyteller and novelist. The absolute master of the short story and the novel is David Albahari (b.1949; seven of his novels have been translated into Italian). There are numerous authors living abroad today: Albahari himself between Canada and Belgrade; Bora Ćosić (b. 1932) in Berlin; Vladimir Pištalo (b.
A new phenomenon is the affirmation of young authors of Serbian origin who live abroad and write in foreign languages (including Nataša Radojčić-Kane, b. 1966, and Téa Obreht, born Bajraktarević in 1985). There are many valuable writers: Gordana Ćirjanić (b. 1957), Mirjana Novaković (b. 1966), Jelena Lengold (b. 1959), the latter winner of the European Union prize for a collection of short stories. The most productive and most successful author is the playwright Biljana Srbljanović (b. 1975), a very severe critic of Serbian society. Milena Marković (b. 1974) is also highly regarded as a playwright; however, there are also many authors who follow the models of consumer literature.
