About the Book
Over the past decade in the new century, Slobodan Maldini has developed a large Internetnet work and an enviable production of written works - dictionaries, essays and novels, architectural designs and projects and engaged artistic intervention. As an independent author he works systematically presenting his achievements on personal internet blogs and web sites that are available to everybody for free. Through his creative scope, Maldini became productive phenomenon, a kind of sublimated electronic machine, where the speed of change of Internet features can be measured by the ideas that this artist brought into the open flow of electronic communication. His thoughtful and visionary projections can be compared only with Antonio Sant'Elia, architectural genius at the beginning of the 20th century and its architectural manifesto of Futurism which "affirms the freedom to say, plastic dynamism, music without quadrature and the art of noise ... declaratively against cowardice traditionalists ". This parallel is not accidental because there is remarkable similarity in their characters and designs, as well as in the selection of their philosophical and classical patterns. The only distinctionis that Sant'Elia belonged to the "Art Nouveau" and early modernism, while Maldini is one of the representatives of the "New Movement" of eighties and inaugurated postmodern phenomenon to new dynamic and transformable spatial structure at the beginning of the 21st century. Maldini's work includes projects of spatial architectural structurres and assemblies, together with monuments, temples, houses, urban areas, views and promenades, multidimensional creations of different profiles, that are moving, assembling and disassembling, changing in the level and angles, positioning in the state of floating, moving or fixing their basic points in the chosen spatial environment. This spacious, anti-gravity architecture, by its structure portable, "architecture to take away" is present in time, available and functional in every element, to all potential users, consumers and fans. In his work there are phases when he writes books, when designing architectural projects, and the most often he works on his artistic topical and critical intervention, visual interference of images in the field of culture, design, comics, "porn and punk neoarchitecture", branding, designing "hypo-micro habitats" ... as an active representation of of his attitude and warning the public. Therefore, maldini's work covers all "marginal" themes which the author considers very important to stress the social hypocrisy and inconsistency of social and cultural programs. Ever since 1982 when he created the project cycle "Utopia", it was clear that Maldini in his research stands among the pillars of historical figures who in their teaching have marked paradigmatic changes in the world since the time of neoplatonism of Thomas More, the Palladian classical models, to futuristic architecture of Sant 'Elia, structural architecture of Buckminster Fuller, "real" architecture of Bogdan Bogdanovic and certainly, transformable spaces of Slobodan Maldini or his "absurd" architecture. We are talking about utopias that are presented and transparent in every historical social cataclysm or progress, about the author's hope and a dream. Their meaning lies in the projection of the future. Maldini belongs to the category of non-builders, bold and irreconcilable architects ... that leave drawings but not realized buildings and oly few formal trails. His rare monuments that were built during mid 1980s in Kosovo (Klina, Istok, Kacanik), were demolished at the beginning of the 1990s. for political but not architectural reasons. This fact does not diminish the value and the importance of the innovations and the contributions of this architect, his sensitive spiritual space, perceptive power and his vision of the new dimension of architecture. Biljana Tomic
About the Author: Slobodan Maldini (1956) Artist, architect, writer, art historian and theoretician of art. 1978 studied art history and Palladian architecture in Vicenza, Italy, under the mentors professor James S. Ackermann (Harvard University) and Wolfgang Lotz (professor on Institute of Fine Arts, New York and director of Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute of Art History). 1985 Maldini exhibited at the Paris Biennale, together with the world icons of art and architecture: Keith Haring, Aldo Rossi, Tadao Ando. He wrote several books, including: "A Dictionary of Spirituality", "Recuerdo", "Dictionary of Architecture", "Kathmandu, Valey of Gods". His edition "Encyclopedia of architecture in six volumes contains over 40.000 entries and over 30.000 photographs. This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date dictionary of architecture. He has exhibited his works of art in many cities of the world. in the last 40 years has done an impressive artistic opus. In his book "Maldini Drawings" he presents his architectural drawings that were created from 1970s to 1990s.