Pametnija Zgrada (“Smarter Building”) is a housing initiative from Belgrade, Serbia that develops a cooperative housing model designed to make homes more affordable and less dependent on speculative market prices. The organisation’s core idea is that residents collectively develop, finance, own, maintain, and operate a multi-apartment building through a housing cooperative, rather than each household shouldering the full risk alone.24
The project is explicitly aimed at addressing housing access in a context where many people in Belgrade cannot secure an apartment except through inheritance or risky borrowing, while housing prices remain high.2 Its model seeks to keep costs stable over the long term: residents pay an entry deposit and then monthly contributions covering loan repayment and running costs, including utilities.2 According to the organisation, these costs are intended to reach about two-thirds of market average levels, with the cooperative retaining ownership so that apartments cannot be resold for private profit.2
Pametnija Zgrada presents itself as part of a broader effort to revive and adapt housing cooperative traditions in Serbia.24 The model has been developed since December 2012 within the platform Ko Gradi Grad (Who Builds the City), and in 2019 the Housing Cooperative Pametnija Zgrada was incorporated in Belgrade, described by the organisation as the first housing cooperative established there in nearly twenty years.34 The project has also been presented as a prototype for wider use and has been connected to research on legal and tax barriers to housing cooperatives.36
Its geographic scope is primarily Belgrade and Serbia, though the organisation frames its work as relevant to cooperative housing discussions more broadly in Europe.24