A family company, Bauprojekt has several decades of experience. Their team of young, energetic and qualified professionals lets them actively participate in the most demanding projects, at home and abroad
Speaking about the greatest challenges in architecture and urbanism, Mr. Seizović points out that he is very proud of the designs that his company signs – it is difficult today to stay on course and stick to a position in relation to the interests of the various parties throughout the implementation of a project.
Since the beginning of your business more than 30 years ago, a lot has changed, but not your motto “Work must be done with quality, speed and efficiency”. Are there no compromises on quality, speed or efficiency?
— I believe that for a company, healthy business development starts with doing the job well, so people get to need us and our skills, knowledge and experience. Then that circle of people expands, and it is up to us to maintain the level of quality that the clients came for. I expect my colleagues to maintain the standards together, because everyone should approach their work seriously and finish it properly.
This is a family business founded by my parents and the least I can do is to support a system that is reliable and solid, but also to prepare it for the new, future generations.
Is it true that the team you lead has more than 2,000,000 m² of projected area in Serbia and abroad? Do some of them merit special mention?
— That’s right! It is a huge area, but the purpose and importance of those areas are an additional motivation and value for me. Constantly looking to the future, with innovation at any cost, we may be able to amaze our colleagues, but what is important for us is the kind of interaction an individual or community will in practice have with that space.
We have worked and are working on two airports in our country, we work on many facilities in protected zones and with specific purposes. After such large and important projects, which gave us even more credibility, it was natural to start work and development outside of our country. We are actively participating in several projects abroad with great success, and this is something that currently occupies me and that I am committed to.
What is the secret of your success and your winning combination?
— Our team works with a core group of founders, people who are undisputed experts with rich experience who want to share their knowledge, they generate true passion for the profession, professional ethics, and driving energy. Around this core works an expanding circle of experts from various fields, above all reliable colleagues. We are divided into teams, our responsibilities are clearly known, we work according to a system that has been established for a long time, and adjusted over time, so today I can say that there is no room for mistakes. I highly value accuracy and involvement in the entire design process, conceptual input and engagement in looking at the bigger picture.
There is more being built in Serbia today than in the last 70-80 years. Do you think that urban development is going in the right direction and that everything is done in accordance with professional standards?
— The civilizational level of a society’s development can be unmistakably seen by its level of urbanization. Unfortunately, today’s design and urban planning is all about immediate problem solving. It is not planned to solve current problems and to avoid new ones, which is the greatest challenge but also the whole purpose of urban planning. In our country, this practice is especially visible in planning, where everything is focused on a specific task, an investor or a plot of land, but not on the development needs of the city or municipality. Slowness in approval and decision-making, procedures that stifle planning, the desire to fulfil demands and the lack of real connection between planned areas are a serious problem.
This is a family business founded by my parents, and the least I can do is support a system that is reliable and solid, but also prepare it for new, future generations
I am afraid that the damage done in this way is difficult to correct and that the consequences of this approach will be visible far into the future. On the other hand, the fact that there are a large number of interested investors and projects is encouraging, and the burden and responsibility of implementation in planning, design and execution has been placed on experts as almost never before. It is very likely that we now have a larger number of serious investors, interested in creating a quality project, because they have had the opportunity to see the consequences of cheap and tacky solutions in the past.
Will issues and topics of green construction, sustainability, energy efficiency and housing culture gain importance from year to year?
— The tendency towards minimizing energy consumption, getting closer to nature and generally reducing environmental pollution to a minimum is also reflected in our work. Each project goes through a rigorous check of possibilities to reduce the impact on the environment, without disturbing the comfort of the users. Great progress has been made in this field and we are sure that with appropriate social support this approach will contribute to a much healthier environment in urban areas than you see at the moment.
You are the author and responsible designer of the Konstantin Veliki airport terminal building in Niš. Tell us about this project.
— Creating a project like that is one of the greatest challenges in the career of any architect. Designing an airport building from scratch is rare and certainly one of the most complex tasks. The terminal building lies at the centre of every airport, where almost all functions, services and the complete organization of high-quality air traffic are intertwined.
In fact, it can be said that an airport is like a small country in itself, because it primarily consists of technical facilities that are “dressed up” in appropriate architecture. The unnecessary limits set before us by urban regulations and the maximum capacity of the number of passengers defined in the design task determine the building dimensions, and any possibility for creating a building of broad dimensions was impeded.
Despite this, we completely succeeded and the result will soon be visible to users and passengers. The building design gives a distant allusion to early aircraft, it meets all the requirements for air traffic now and for future standards. It will symbolize the airport in general, if it is completed in accordance with the technical documentation. Pictures from the site show that works are heading in that direction, and so I have to emphasize that this project has shown all the strength of the Bauprojekt team, because from the first sketch to the last drawing, it was done within our company.