Life in the New

In Life in the New, Marius Svaleng Andresen delves into the complexity of urban development and its impact on people, with the district of Novi Beograd, Belgrade, Serbia, as a backdrop. How does the relationship between people and architecture change as cities grow and become denser? Through interviews with the area’s inhabitants and photographs that blend documentary and art, Life in the New explores what lies beyond the facade of the brutalist and socialist buildings of modernism. Impressive architectural forms and complex geometries recede into the background to reveal everyday life in all its mundane glory: its little dramas, its melancholy, its discomforts, quirkiness, and humour. Every now and then, however, Andresen discovers moments of pure beauty, the fragile, unpremeditated poetry of the everyday that thrives amidst the formality of the architects’ grand visions.