Between author’s dreams and client’s wishes

Contemporary praxis of church construction in the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) and the client-architect relationship are conditioned by Church tradition and regulations. The main question is what constitutes the essence of tradition and what are the mechanisms of its transmission and change, as well as who are the interpreters —the client and/or the architect. This paper focuses on a couple of rare examples of Orthodox Christian temples built in Serbia based on the awarded competition designs. It analyses the transformations of awarded designs until realization. In the analysed cases, the voice of the client —who is usually personified by the diocesan bishop, in accordance with the internal structure and the Constitution of the SOC— is articulated in a specific and less direct way, through the competition program and the votes of the jury members.