This residence for the elderly should not look old. Further, it should keep a dialectic relationship between different age groups and the urban spaces assigned to each. Through ramps, the communal areas flow into the zones of private units. The building opens and maintains an exchange with the city

"Eyes on the City" is a competition entry for a retirement home in Southern Serbia. We are faced with yet another paradox concerning the growth of the global population. The statistics report that in some countries more than a third of the people are older than 50. This phenomenon, not entirely dependent on the level of the country's development (Italy and Serbia, for example, share the same percentage of the elderly population), will have to be addressed by architectural decisions to come. Many questions and concerns are involved; however one seems to be the most pressing. Cities are being increasingly populated by younger professionals, who are statistically less populous than the older generation: Where is the place in the city for the elderly?

The generation of the now "elderly socialists" was young when it was an imperative to remain forever young. They were the 1968 'revolutionary' generation. A building for the elderly of today and tomorrow should follow this mood of experiment, investigation and creative hallucination. The project for the small city of Valjevo seemed destined for such an attempt. The site, surrounded by urban fabric, overlooks the city. Its architecture of ramped sequence parallels the slope, thus mirroring the topography of the land, and reflecting it in the interior 'landscape' as a spatial experience. It may be apt not only for a generational challenge by the 68-ards, but also for a promise of a bright future - to reclaim the anticipations of the communist past, which places like this may well hope for and deserve.

Project credits: Normal Group for Architecture, Sabine von Fischer & Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, 2003