Building Praxis and/or Practicing Building

A review of Andjelka Badnjar Gojnić, Praxis of Collective Building: Narratives of Philosophy and Construction, Berlin: JOVIS, 2023, 200 pages. ISBN: 9783868597721. Badnjar Gojnić’s book presents an alternative narrative of Yugoslavian post-war modernization within its national and transnational context positioned at the intersection of praxis philosophy and the history of collective architectural production. The book meticulously documents how such a collective came into being through a trial-and-error dialogical philosophical-architectural mutuality that is reflected in the author’s methodology. The book offers the reader multilayered microhistories of anonymous workers, virtuosic philosophers, and data, often prioritizing theory over history.