Lesson 4 Rural Architecture of Serbia

7/26/2019 Lesson 4 Rural Architecture of Serbia

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Lesson 4 in Traditional Serbian Rural Architecture:The Family Homestead

This is what I saw the first time I visited the homestead. The ground is on the right side of thevillage road on a little hill whit a wooden entrance gate.On the left there is the older house (where my husband's grand dad Velimir was born) and inthe background is the newer house that Deda Velimir has build in the 1970's.

I noticed right away, that the view from the house is really nice , you have control over thevillage road seeing who's coming and going (fantastic!)


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This is the view from the terasse of the newer house.

A big pear-tree (with two kind of pears on the same tree, Deda Velimir liked to cross sorts offruits!) gives a nice shadow over the house, in front the older house and in the background thevillage road.Deda Velimir choose the best place to build the new house, on top of his terrain with the bestview. He arranged trees in manner to have shadow and to be protected from too curious looks.

Also in the back he built a couple of stalls, for chicken, pigs and other smaller animals. Now fora couple of years they're been empty.

It corresponds pretty good to the typical arrangement of a traditional Serbian Homestead,where single or mixed stables are arranged around the house, with stalls and toilets in theback, between the house and the stalls or in front of the house it's usually a good place for the

fruit garden (grapes, pears, apples and of course plums) or the vegetable garden.Some houses have also the hayloft and all sorts of workshops around the main house.Common is also to have a pantry or place for storage placed somewhere near the house.

Above is a sketch I made of the arrangement of the homestead. Usually homesteads consistedof several buildings, each one of a specific purpose.


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Deda Velimir lived with his wife Jelica in the newer house and used the older one as a

workshop (he weaved baskets, worked also as the local barber and did all sorts of craft worksaround the house).He used the basement of the old house as a storage for Rakija and a lot of other kind of wintersupplies from the garden and fields. (The fields are not directly connected with the homesteadand lay lower in a flatter part of the village).

This the newer House like I saw it for the first time. Not in very bad shape, but howeverstaying empty for years and on the other hand, the fact that Deda Velimir couldn't completelyfinish the house, showed that if we want to renovate it, it will be a big work and it will need tobe planned carefully.

Also from the terrasse there is a very nice overlook (over the old's house roof) to the othermahalla (district) of the village. Deda Velimir built the house high enough to overlook the older

house and to have a nice panoramic view.


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The terrain has like two entrances. One below, arriving from the lower village and one a bit upthe road, what would allow to enter the terrain without climbing up a foot path.

In the background is the backside of the older house.

On the foot of the terrain is one of the intersections of the village...ok it's not particularlycrowded, but it's sort of a center. Alo there is the source of water, a very old source withalways very good quality water for drinking (summer and winter).

Another very important piece of the traditionalhomestead is the fountain (!"#$%). This one infront of the house was made by Deda Velimir.

Water is a big question here in the village, inwinter there is enough of it, but in the summer

months, when it doesn't rain much, the privatewater basins run out of water and the sources dryout.


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View to the upper side of the terrain. I also see it better as the main entrance instead of thelower entrance so far away and with the steep path.

Walking around the ground, we were pretty sure that we liked most of the components of the

homestead and didn't wanted basically to change their arrangement. The main question wasmore, if to keep the newer house like it is...or to tear it down and build a completely new oneon the same place.We decided to sleep over it and to consider the two options.What we knewso far was, that yes, we wanted to put all our energy into this project. Too tempting to createour getaway far away from traffic, noise and all sort of craziness you want to escape from timeto time.

Later we went to vist Uncle Radivoje who showed us the two little goats that were born acouple of weeks before.

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Lesson 4 Rural Architecture of Serbia