Researching and planning the rural space: The work of Branislav Kojic

Abstract

An architect and ruralist, professor and academician, Branislav Kojić made a remarkable contribution to the study of village architecture and villages, their design and planning. His approach was thorough, systematic, comprehensive and interdisciplinary, and resulted in the establishment of a special trend in the study of the village in these regions-"ruralism". His research had interregional aspect, encompassing space of all the six former republics of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, and with consideration of local and regional specificities. Creativity of Branislav Kojić united the elements of architecture, urbanism, ethnology, human geography, and allowed the filling of gaps in the former knowledge and approaches to rural issues. In order to present Branislav Kojić's scientific opus and contribution, the paper presents the basic lines of his work, thinking and development of ideas, following the hierarchy of spatial unitsfrom a rural house, a courtyard, through a village atar, a rural settlement, a system of settlements and a rural region, and finally to the villages in the regional spatial frames.

Considerations regarding a new settlement typology in Serbia

“…The need for a more complex settlement division than the urban-rural dichotomy was already accentuated by authors in Serbia at the beginning of the 20th century (Drobnjaković et al, 2017). This need for a more complex settlement typology has increased in parallel with the rising complexity of economic diversification (Lukić, 2011;Van Eupen et al, 2012;Pušić & Pajvančić Cizelj, 2014;Eder, 2019).…”

“…In the past, spatial planners and other professionals in Serbia relied on Macura's trichotomous differentiation of settlements -urban, rural and combined, which were applied in statistical reports for the census years 1953, 1961and 1971(Rudež, 1981Živanović, 2018). Kojić, who devoted a significant portion of his work to distinguishing between rural settlement types, criticized the dichotomous categorization of settlements as being over simplified with regard to the number of settlement types and indicators used for their separation (population size and occupation of the population) (Drobnjaković et al, 2017). The OECD regional typology was criticized for the same reasons (Pizzoli & Gong, 2007;Van Eupen et al, 2012).…”

“…There are eight settlement types in the United Kingdom (UK) national statistics (Pizzoli & Gong, 2007), with 15 theoretical types developed solely on the specific topic of CO 2 emissions in England (Baiocchi et al, 2015). In general, those who have considered theoretical divisions of solely rural settlements and areas have distinguished three or four types (Dossaa et al, 2011;Van Eupen et al, 2012;Drobnjaković et al, 2017).…”

“…Therefore, the nature of a typology depends on the number and features of the indicators chosen to distinguish the types within it. In his anthropogeographic typology, Kojić used non-quantified indicators such as settlement genesis, terrain morphology and a transport network (Drobnjaković et al, 2017). Similar indicators were applied more recently by Čurović & Popović (2014) in the typology of architectural heritage.…”

“…They can be also called accessibility variables, which Van Eupen et al Specifically addressing Serbia, Kojić claimed that demographic variables, such as population size and occupation, which are variables based on economic activity, are not sufficient for a proper settlement typology. Both Kojić (Drobnjaković et al, 2017) and later Stamenković (2004) emphasize that variables should also reflect the functions of settlements. Stamenković (1987) and Lukić (2011) believe that functions of a settlement indicate the relevance of the settlement in a settlement system, which can be measured by daily migrations.…”