Salon Isakovic | Sara Dimitrijevic

The project included the adaptation of a „salon apartment” , located in a building from 1946, in Belgrade, Serbia. The apartment had typical spatial and functional organization common for period between the two world wars, in Serbia. Over time, the apartment changed its original condition, both in terms of space and organization, as well as in terms of ambience.

The idea of restoration on the one hand, and the idea of scenography from the period drama as a spatial- artistic representation of collective memories, on the other hand, ran through the project all the time. The goal was to return the space, functionally and ambiently, to its original form, but at the same time to maintain live contact with the present. It aspired to a subtle, elegant, and reduced expression.

The process of adaptation restored some of the basic characteristics of the “salon apartment”: clear differentiation of reception and living rooms, hallway as a festive dining room in which a large table for family gatherings and ceremonies was usually set, salon space on the street side of the building that served to receive guests, as well as the representative dimensions of the space with a height of 3 m.

Photographing the apartment in the final phase of the project was seen as a kind of experiment, to which the artist Emma Bednarz contributed greatly. Her photographs from the recent protests in Belgrade, which are exhibited in the apartment, created a dialogue between the interior and the context in which it is located and revived the contact of the past with the present.

Inspiration: Robert Bresson, Audrey Hepburn, Dragana Ognjenović, Marusa Zorec, Biljana Đurdevicc