There’s a kind of joy in watching design pilgrims detour from mainstream design capitals and head for cities with poignant, interesting stories to tell. Belgrade has been gathering this kind of momentum, and the latest arrival in the Serbian capital’s design debate makes for an attractive case for booking a flight. Esthetic Joys Embassy (EJE) Belgrade – a hybrid dining room, discothèque and future hotel – has opened inside the boutique Pavilion Hotel at Dobračina 39, deep in the Dorćol area.
The concept of the Embassy itself deserves to be poured out. Esthetic Joys is a creative collective founded in Moscow in 2016, which moved abroad in 2022 and opened its first Embassy in Yerevan in the same year. The team describes each Ambassador as a gathering place for all cultures and regardless of politics, built on what they call the ping-pong of cultures – every rental is a new conversation with its city rather than a copy of the last.
Form Follows Emotion: Devon Turnbull and Karimoku Craft Wood Speakers That Stir the Soul.
This three-story exhibition of wooden speakers, immersive listening areas, and acoustic panels was inspired by traditional Japanese folding screens, focused on Ma’s concept—the essential space between silence and sound.
In Belgrade, EJ signed up for Supaform, a studio founded by artist and designer Maxim Scherbakov, whose work has long traded in obscure-but-known references to design history. (We last covered his fun-for-nothing Hidden Entourage show in Rome.) The pairing felt inevitable.
The concept of place is a speculative fantasy that filters the modernity of Yugoslavia in the late 1950s and early 1960s through a postmodern, semi-modernist lens. An important reference is the K67 kiosk – Saša Mächtig’s modular icon of 1966, whose rounded geometry looks equally at home on a Belgrade street corner or a moon pit. Scherbakov runs with that aerodynamic hope and lets it bloom: oval light panels bathe the ceiling in shifting light, the DJ booth pays direct homage to the K67, and a warm, deep yellow runs through the space like a fever dream.
Bucharest’s Communist-Era Apartment Block Becomes Romania’s Coolest Music Venue.
Romania’s first listening center occupies a historically important building from the 1960s. The design combines original socialist elements by using modern materials.
Then there was a sound. A pair of vintage JBL 4435 studio monitors and a curated vinyl library round out what is a Japanese listening bar grown in the Balkans. On the far side of the bar, six ichirani-style booths allow you to draw the curtain, tuck in your headphones and disappear completely. The sofas are upholstered in an original London Underground moquette – the ultimate play of Misha Black’s District linear pattern, taken straight from the mill.
Add a yoshoku-leaning Japanese kitchen helmed by Moscow-based chef Katsuhiko Kobayashi (bisque ramen shares menu space with hambagu, the Japanese cousin of Serbia’s beloved pljeskavica), artwork by artist Ilona Skorobulatova, and music by Ignat Akimov and Igor Horozović, and the picture sharpens. EJE Belgrade is not trying to be somewhere else. It tries to be everywhere at once – and somehow, in Dorćol, it falls flat.
Voce at Triennale Milano Elevates Music to Museum-Worthy Art Status.
The president of the Triennale Stefano Boeri sees music as a fine art, creating exceptional works that are only admired on site.
[Images courtesy of Supaform. Photography by Varvara Toplennikova.]