Architecture of Cosmopolitics, 2020

In early June 1972, diplomatic representatives of 133 countries came together in Stockholm at the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. The outcome of this pioneering endeavor was the declaration that formed an embryo, but also the germ of all subsequent international bodies, policies, and declarations on environmental issues, including the recent Paris Agreement on climate change. Only a year before the Stockholm conference, the study “Systematization of the Phenomenon of the Human Environment” was published in socialist Yugoslavia. It tackled an array of environmental concerns from a radically different perspective. The study experimented with systems theory and cybernetics to offer a rather unconventional vision of the planetary future. With a series of thirty-six diagrams providing a deep dive into entanglements of human, technological, and natural systems, “Systematization” can be read as an intense visual tour de force rather than a dense technocratic textual thread.

Unlike the Stockholm declaration, the study was the vision of a single man, Croatian architect Branko Petrovic? (1922–1975). His research evolved from the logic of Yugoslav self-management, but also from his experience in Ethiopia where he worked as an international planning expert. At the time, both countries were prominent members of the Non-Aligned Movement, culturally, economically, and ideologically heterogeneous, yet a significant third force in the chaotic, divided world.

In an era when finding ways to shift from an old concept of geopolitics to new climatic configuration is of utmost urgency, reopening the study almost fifty years after its publication makes it possible to explore a potentially “non-aligned,” diagramatic visions of the planetary future.

Exhibition concept: Nikola Bojic  Nikola BOJIĆ
Diagrams: Branko Petrovic
Exhibition design: Damir Gamulin
Video production: Miro Roman
Concept and design of synthetic persona: Miro Roman 
Archival research: Irena Šimic