Through the prism of complementary notions, formal and informal, the book explores Belgrade’s post socialist turmoil. Spanning between investigations of New Belgrade, formerly planned and built as the Yugoslav modern capital, and studies of the informal urban paradigm predominant during the 1990s, the book offers a portrait of Belgrade entering a new, global reality. Belgrade is presented not as an extreme and isolated case of urban transformation, but as a city whose recent history sheds light on processes now shaping contemporary European cities.

ETH Studio Basel Contemporary City Institute was founded in 1999 as part of the Department of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Belgrade. Formal Informal was initiated in 2006 with a student research project carried out by the ETH Studio Basel in collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade.