Presentation of the book Modern Architecture in the Balkans

You are kindly invited to the presentation of the book Modern Architecture in the Balkans - From Le Corbusier to Tito, which will take place at the DESSA Gallery on Friday, 15 May 2026, at 7 p.m.

This book is the result of a continuous series of trips and studies carried out over the last few decades in the Balkans, a region considered for a long time “in the middle” or as a “semi-periphery”, as many have often defined it. Trips that have revealed a territory that is in a certain sense new, having an unusual and oriental charm and character. Trips that have above all allowed us to discover that during a good part of the twentieth century the Balkans have been able to express a highly sophisticated architectural and urban culture, revealing a “neglected modernism” that is just now emerging from anonymity.

The book tries to understand the reasons for the development of modern architecture in the Balkans, starting from the famous Voyage d’Orient by Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in 1911, in which the future Le Corbusier was the first to appreciate the originality of the architecture of these places. But the modernity that developed in the post-war period would not have existed without the figure of Josip Broz Tito, partisan and charismatic leader of Yugoslavia, who promoted with political and cultural foresight a “socialist modernization” through sights directed both to the East and to the West, while maintaining a firm faith in a political ideology that he interpreted in a free and original way.

The two central characters of this work are therefore Le Corbusier and Tito and, even if there is no direct relationship between them, the book presents a series of intersecting relationships that, starting from the interpretation of the cities and their architecture, trace a path that gives this region a role of a definite centrality in the international architectural panorama of the 20th century.

Lorenzo Pignatti

Lorenzo Pignatti (1954) has been full professor of architectural and urban design at the Department of Architecture – Università G. d'Annunzio – Pescara (Italy) until 2024, when he retired. Over the years, he has been member of the University Senate, acted as Director of the Department of Architecture (2020–2023), Course Coordinator of LM4 (2015–2020) and Erasmus Coordinator (2010–2015).

He was P. I. in an Erasmus + KA2 project, coordinated an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s degree (EMJMD) call and many research groups securing significant European funding and international academic relationships.

He carries out studies and research on the Adriatic and Balkan region. He has participated to as well as promoted numerous international exchange initiatives, organised conferences and workshops in various countries, presented many papers, invited as a keynote speaker and published various books and essays on these themes.

He is also Professor Emeritus of the University of Waterloo (Canada), where he acted as Director of the Rome Programme for more that 25 years and he now remains a scientific consultant of it.

He has always been an investigator of various phenomena related to the development of modernity and has reinterpreted them both in theoretical research and in design work. He has been the founding partner of the firm Ottone Pignatti Architetti (Rome) which concentrated its work on urban regeneration and the design of public spaces.

He lives between Rome, the Veneto and Ithaca.