On March 1-2, 2023, the Princeton University School of Architecture will host the WDA Conference.
Architecture by Svetlana Kana Radevi is a radical act of mediation. Her buildings, which rose to prominence in postwar Yugoslavia, communicate on all sizes, confronting geopolitical and socioeconomic issues. Her work filters modernism’s international impulses via an intimate, place-based lens, drawing on understanding of materiality and vernacular traditions of her native Montenegro (formerly Yugoslavia). Within the Yugoslav communist state, Radevi’s civic spaces re-centered regional knowledge and facilitated a socially progressive public sphere.
Radevi was the youngest and only woman to earn the national Yugoslav Borba Prize for Architecture in 1968, when she was 29 years old, for her design of Hotel Podgorica. Notable buildings such as the Podgorica Bus Terminal, Petrovac Apartment Building, and Monument to Dead Fighters reflect Radević’s commitment to create a symbiosis between public involvement and landscape design through the use of local building materials, bold shapes, and generous proportions. Radevi developed her unique cross-cultural approach while working in the United States, Japan, France, Russia, and Yugoslavia, where she eventually settled for the rest of her career.
The eighth Womxn in Design and Architecture Conference at Princeton School of Architecture honors Svetlana Kana Radevi’s life and achievements. The conference proceedings for 2022-23 will address relevant issues and questions, such as What is architecture’s role in times of social and political transformation? How can architecture help to re-center local power structures, collective memory, and vernacular tradition? Radevi’s legacy raises problems that are as relevant today as they were during her lifetime, disrupting the divide between peripheral and center while standing as one of the most avant-garde voices of Yugoslavian architecture.
Participants include Ljiljana Blagojević Ph.D., Sonja Dragović, Dr. Lina Džuverović, Anna Kats, Ena Kukić, Vladimir Kulić, Prof. a.D. Dr.-Ing. Mary Pepchinski, Dr. Dubravka Sekulić, Dr. Ljubica Spaskovska, Łukasz Stanek, and Alla Vronskaya, among others.
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About WDA
Womxn in Design and Architecture (WDA) is a graduate student group at Princeton University’s School of Architecture that was founded in 2014. The annual WDA conference honors an important female architect or designer’s work and legacy, with presentations from international historians and scholars, as well as artists, curators, and practitioners.
2022-23 WDA Members include Olivia Ahmadi, Jocelyn Beausire, Marie Chapa, Julia Chou, Hermine Demaël, Keren Dillard, Sophia Diodati, Vanessa Gonzalez, Laura Fegely, Patty Hazle, Luciana Hodara Rahde, Kyara Robinson, Sofia Rojo, Ewa Roztocka, Marie de Testa, Shoshana Torn, Priscilla Zhang, and Janeen Zheng.
Princeton University School of Architecture
Princeton, New Jersey 08544
United States