May 23, 2018 - The Government of Montenegro has extended its mandate to the Chief State Architect Prof. Dr. Dušan Vuksanović for another six months. Formally, Vuksanović is the acting director of the General Director of the Directorate of State Architect at the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism.
Since the adoption of the new Law on Spatial Planning and the Construction of Facilities in October last year, the absolute centralization of space planning activities came into force in Montenegro. The institution of the chief architect of the state carries excellent power because the practitioner of this function ponders literally everything.
The Chief State Architect gives consent to the design of the building, the square and other public spaces in the settlements, but also checks the conformity of the conceptual design with the urban design. In addition, it sets out guidelines for aligning the external appearance of the object and gives consent regarding the appearance of the temporary object. Approval shall be given by a decision, upon the request of the investor, within 15 days from the date of filing the request. For example, in Tivat, we currently have a situation where the investor, the Sea Trade company, has the approval of the chief architect of the reconstruction project of Ponta Seljanova, which was not built in accordance with the urban technical conditions issued by the Tivat Municipality on the basis of the State Sector 22 study. Against this project is the manager of the Public Water Management Company, with which the investor does not have the lease on this part of the Montenegrin coast, but also the citizens who have protested the plans of the Sea Trade company but also the Law on Spatial Planning and Construction of Facilities, which brings us into situations like this.
For the duration of the public debate on the current Law on Spatial Planning and Building Facilities, space planning and cultural heritage specialists have repeatedly warned that the introduction of the Institute of the Main State Architect is a precedent and that such centralization of decision-making on planning and construction is anti-European and anti-democratic.
Professor Dušan Vuksanović graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Belgrade in 1980. Postgraduate studies in the field of energy analysis of buildings and renewable energy applications were completed at the Faculty of Architecture, Construction, and Geodesy - Department of Civil Engineering in Ljubljana. The master thesis entitled "Architectural Analysis of Energy Balancing of the Building" was defended by Vuksanovic in 1991.
His doctoral dissertation titled "Traditional Architecture in Montenegro and Bioclimatism" was defended at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade in 1997, on the theme of traditional forms of traditional rural architecture, as a model of sustainability and regional identities.
He has been a professor of the University since 2008 and was engaged as a national expert on the energy efficiency implementation of buildings in Montenegro in 2011, whose coordinator was the Ministry of Economy.
