Elena Vasic Petrovic is an award-winning architect-conservator, senior expert, and conservator advisor at the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Nis, where she previously served as Director (2012–2017). With over 70 projects and 50 publications to her name, her work on the village of Gostuša won the Grand Prix of the EU/Europa Nostra Award in 2016. She is also the founder of the Architect Aleksandar Radović Foundation and the studio DE arhitektura.
Path to heritage: Architecture and history
Can you tell me a bit about your path and how you connected architecture with cultural heritage?
Well, I was always attracted to history and drawing, history generally, not only the history of architecture. My older sister had just enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture, and from her I got this great guide to architecture, where I read what turned out to be a key piece of advice: if you like to draw and you aren’t bad at mathematics, then architecture is the field for you. That is how my journey in architecture began. Back when I was studying, the theme of heritage was not present at the university at all. Now it is a bit different; the change isn’t major, but heritage is at least present as a field closely connected to architecture.
Since my university studies lacked this major interest of mine, I searched for ways to engage with history at large through non-formal education. In my third year of studies, I attended the Summer School of Architecture in Cetinje, Montenegro, led by Prince Nikola Petrović of the Montenegrin royal family, who is an architect and used to live and work in Paris.
At this summer school, we engaged with what we now call brownfields, in other words, industrial heritage. We mainly worked with abandoned factories, like the Obod factory. It was there that I first encountered the terms and practices of reconstruction, rehabilitation, and revitalization… revealing to me the perfect combination for my path going forward.
As I come from the eastern part of Serbia, Pirot, there is a big medieval fortress in the city that was completely abandoned. So, influenced by the summer school and this discovery, I decided to make my thesis about the revitalization of the Pirot medieval fortress. That was also the first topic of its kind at the university, so it was something new for my professors as well. It was through this thesis that I first came into contact with the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Niš, and that is how it all started. I began working with the Institute, and everything took off from there.
Traditional artisans and modern project constraints
Today, through your practice and work at the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Niš, do you collaborate with traditional artisans? How does that dynamic work?
Yes, the field of traditional crafts is extremely important. It is crucial to support this field — not only through official institutions, but also through non-formal skills training, knowledge transmission, and financial support. In Serbia, the knowledge of artisans is often described as samouk (self-taught). In most cases, you encounter people who simply learned a craft on their own by chance, or through family tradition. Overall, the broader issue is that people don’t view it as a sustainable career that can support them financially.
The protection of built cultural heritage should pay the utmost attention to traditional building crafts, because we truly depend on the knowledge of these artisans. However, the conditions under which we work and execute projects have changed drastically compared to the past. Projects used to span 10-year phases; now, everything is short-term with strict budget constraints — usually 1 to 2 years. This time crunch makes it very challenging to integrate traditional artisans into the project workflow, despite their skills almost always being necessary.
Does this mean that collaborating with artisans is limited to only the most exclusive, high-profile heritage sites?
There is a common attitude in our field that hiring traditional artisans is too expensive and time-consuming, and that it is only justified for the most significant, high-priority heritage sites. That is the prevailing mindset in practice today.
This attitude naturally has a bad impact on the field of traditional building crafts – fewer and fewer people decide to pursue these traditional crafts, and only those who carry a genuine love and passion for the work manage. For instance, we have an extraordinary carpenter with whom we have collaborated for a long time. He often tells us that he cannot make a living from heritage conservation projects alone, but he actually survives by manufacturing wooden insect screens. It simply isn’t financially viable for him to rely on occasional heritage work when commercial production pays the bills.
Vernacular knowledge & unwritten building principles
Do you have an example of a project where an artisan had a key function in the heritage reconstruction/revitalization project? For instance, someone specialising in specific roofs, like the stone slab roofs found on Stara Planina?
Mainly, crafts of that type, those tightly bound to vernacular architecture, are a different category of old crafts, primarily because those houses were built by the local people themselves. Literally everyone knew how to do roofing, plastering, and wooden structures in the villages. Of course, some were a bit more skilled, but basic tasks like plastering and whitewashing were common knowledge.
When you visit some of those villages, for example in Eastern Serbia where we spent considerable time researching and revitalising those structures, you realize these are truly folk crafts. They pass down more easily because you will almost certainly find someone in their 60s or 70s who clearly remembers how and in what way things were done. If things are a bit more complex, like installing a roof made of stone slabs, you first need someone willing to think through how those pieces fit together and find the internal logic behind it. But even then, if you dismantle the slabs from a roof, you immediately grasp the principle, the cause, and what really matters.
Now, when we move to carpentry, anyone can figure out how to assemble a basic roof structure, but the question is: how long will it last? Are the joinery details executed properly?
For instance, there were projects where we could find only a single person who knew how to work with those specific stone roofs. Stone slabs in Eastern Serbia are completely different from the ones used in Western Serbia – different dimensions, different laying techniques, a totally different principle, and a different timber structure supporting it all. On other occasions, we would find a dozen local villagers amazed to see us engaging with these simple traditional operations.
For us, it was all incredibly interesting because we could document it and observe firsthand how it works in practice on site. Certain things simply cannot be transmitted in written form. You have to be there, see it, dismantle a roof, and put it back together to truly understand it. No matter how many diagrams or manuals you have, it’s not the same.
It’s not the same – especially because no two stone slabs are ever identical.
Exactly. There is no algorithm or fixed rulebook; there are basic principles, but everything else is handled case by case. That is where the beauty of vernacular architecture lies.
Generational gap & inadequate support
You mentioned that today someone who possesses this knowledge might be around 60 years old. What is happening with the younger generation? Have you encountered anyone in their 30s or 40s who inherited these crafts from the local community?
Absolutely. During our work on monasteries and churches in the Pirot region, we came across a family traditionally engaged in construction work. These are usually small, family-run firms that handle smaller-scale operations; they don’t have the desire or capacity for massive commercial sites, making them the only type of firm that can actually dedicate themselves to traditional crafts. A large company simply cannot do this.
There was a young man there, a philosophy student, in fact, who worked alongside his father on their projects. There wasn’t a single technique he couldn’t execute, and everything he did was flawless. However, due to a lack of systemic incentives for young people to stay in these fields, he unfortunately no longer does this work; he moved on to something entirely different.
And that brings us back to what we discussed earlier: there is a complete lack of support. There are occasional public calls in Serbia for supporting traditional crafts, but they are generally not aimed at traditional building crafts. And the funds allocated are tiny; you cannot expect anyone to preserve a traditional craft if you offer them 500 or 1,000 euros on an annual level.
Would you say that the artisans who choose to stay in the profession earn a decent living and stay fully engaged? Or do they switch careers due to social status and a lack of respect for the craft, or simply because of a lack of consistent work?
There is plenty of work, but craftsmen prefer to turn to simpler, more profitable jobs. They might stay in construction, but they’ll switch to tiling, which is still a trade, but works much faster with modern materials. You can complete a job quickly and earn significantly more money in less time.
If traditional crafts, the knowledge you carry in your hands and mind, passed down as heritage, were valued more than a square meter of ceramic tiles, then artisans would have a financial incentive to return to traditional building.
The main problem in Serbia is that « traditional crafts » are officially understood as making small utilitarian items or handicrafts – things that don’t require substantial infrastructure. There is no public awareness that traditional building crafts require a serious workshop and substantial initial investment so that people can master the trade and have a workspace during that initial startup period.
So the need definitely exists, but people simply don’t see the financial viability.
And they probably don’t see a clear pathway to start out, even if they inherited old machinery that now requires investment, much like what happened to agriculture in Serbia. It gets neglected due to a lack of institutional backing.
Precisely. You might still find an occasional person who knows these crafts, but they will likely be very reluctant to even talk about it…
Endangered crafts
Which one or two specific crafts would you single out as being of great importance to vernacular architecture, yet facing the highest risk of total extinction?
Definitely roofing, especially for a vast number of historical buildings. On Stara Planina and across Eastern Serbia, structures historically featured roofs made from massive stone slabs. That is a skill that will inevitably vanish. The older generation who still knows how to do it and even the few individuals we managed to train during our projects won’t continue manually crafting them long-term.
This break in continuity is a massive problem. We simply couldn’t scale up certain restoration projects to a larger size because there were no workers available who possessed the necessary skills.
Another critical craft is traditional timber framing, specifically carpentry techniques that rely entirely on interlocking wooden joints without any metal connectors or fasteners. Entire structural frames, load-bearing and partition walls, roof trusses, and ceiling structures were assembled without a single nail or bracket. That craft is literally on the verge of disappearing; very few people understand how it works today.
Furthermore, the original timber structures built this way are gradually deteriorating and collapsing. Eventually, all that will remain are our technical drawings. Anyone wanting to revive these techniques in the future wouldn’t be starting from scratch, they would be starting far below zero.
I wonder if it’s even possible for someone to learn these hands-on crafts solely from architectural drawings…
Only if they already have foundational carpentry experience and approach it as a specialised advanced skill. You have to already be grounded in the trade, and then learn the historical nuances on top of that foundation.
Personal favourite
Looking back across your career, which project stands out as your personal favorite?
There are quite a few! My first love has always been medieval fortresses; they remain the most impressive to me, particularly the inland fortifications scattered across Serbia. I couldn’t pick just one since I’ve worked on dozens over the years, each unique in its own right.
In terms of scale and continuous dedication, the most extensive projects I’ve led are our long-term work on the vernacular architecture of Stara Planina, alongside the conservation of the Pirot Fortress and the Niš Fortress. Those received the lion’s share of my time and energy, both as a team lead and as the author and initiator of the conservation designs.
Another deeply meaningful project was Justiniana Prima. It was one of the very first sites I worked on early in my career. I approached it with immense passion and ambitious ideas to implement serious conservation measures. Although full implementation didn’t happen at the time, it remains one of our most important archaeological sites, and I hope to see those plans realised in the future.
On the contemporary side, the largest physical intervention I’ve managed is the protective shelter structure at Mediana. In that project, my role was project manager – handling team coordination, logistics, administration, and legal permits. It was a completely different historical scope: antiquity and Roman mosaics that required long-term structural protection.
You end up immersing yourself so deeply in every site that each project becomes a piece of who you are.
It sounds difficult to separate yourself from the work when every project takes a piece of you.
It really does. But returning to medieval fortresses – that period has always resonated most closely with my personal sensibility as a conservator.
Hands-on work
Speaking of those medieval fortresses, how does collaboration with traditional craftsmen work on those specific sites?
While that traditional expertise has almost completely died out, it isn’t impossible to overcome. If you find an artisan with genuine goodwill and dedication, you can achieve solid results.
In practice, it requires immense time on site. I’ve literally had to build alongside the masons on the scaffolding and manually apply lime render to the masonry surfaces myself. It can be a very unfamiliar procedure for modern masons. They are used to modern plastering techniques, applying mortar and immediately smoothing it flat.
When working with traditional lime mortars, I will mix the batch with them, apply it, and then ask for a wet sponge to press into the surface after application. That process exposes the aggregate and creates the authentic historical texture. At first, the masons looked at me in disbelief and asked, « Did you really go to university for five years just to wipe mud with a sponge? »
Eventually, I just take the tool and demonstrate it myself. Most masons respect that once they see it done. I’m no stranger to getting my hands dirty on site and honestly, working directly with the material, with mud on your hands, is often the most rewarding part of the entire profession.
Legal obstacles
Beyond the lack of skilled artisans, I am curious about the legal framework. In what ways does current legislation fail to support artisans, and how could the law be adapted to help these crafts survive and be passed down to future generations?
First and foremost, our work is strictly bound by general construction legislation, which in many respects fails to recognise cultural heritage as a sector requiring specialised treatment. If we change the law to treat conservation works on listed cultural monuments differently from standard construction, we would create a clear legal avenue to integrate traditional artisans directly into restoration processes.
The primary obstacle is that current construction law is extremely rigid. For instance, when sourcing building materials, you are legally required to provide technical datasheets, certified test reports, and formal compliance certificates. Documentation that is practically impossible to obtain for traditional, locally sourced materials like raw earth, lime, or stone.
We already have legal precedents in other areas; for example, energy efficiency regulations explicitly exempt designated immovable cultural property from standard compliance targets. A similar approach should be extended to material usage and craftsmanship.
We need to place far greater policy emphasis on authentic conservation approaches rather than defaulting to modern synthetic materials that operate on completely different physical and chemical principles. When we rely solely on modern methods and materials, we strip historical buildings of their physical authenticity.
Furthermore, a major practical issue in our market is that large building suppliers only offer standardised, off-the-shelf products. If you approach a manufacturer with a non-standard structural issue, for instance, saying, « I don’t have capillary rising damp at the base, but rather moisture trapped higher up in the wall », their standard product lines cannot accommodate it.
When off-the-shelf industrial products fail to address these complex restoration challenges, that is precisely where we find the legal and practical justification to return to traditional building crafts. It brings us back to that direct, tangible connection between the artisan and the historic structure, allowing us to restore built heritage authentically.
