Milos Milivojevic Makes Green Design Look Good

Milos Milivojevic is a Serbian-based architect with an eye for fashion. His work bears a crisp, aesthetic-conscious edge, as he believes that "architecture and fashion are highly influential modes of creative expression that constantly intersect." It's worth juxtaposing the two art forms, Milivojevic adds, because they share the same core purpose: providing "shelter and protection for the human body."

You can see that marriage in this collared button down:

But that mashup is even more striking in Milivojevic's low-footprint architectural sensibility.

Take his first commissioned project, a cluster of small wooden apartments. Milivojevic purposely set the hyper-modern structures against the rural milieu of Zlatibor Mountainm and has gone on to work with eco-conscious heating and cooling systems. But one of his more recent projects, called Strawberry Tree Black, is his first atempt at work tackling the use of solar energy.

Strawberry Energy, a fledgling Serbian company that Milovjevic described as being "motivated by a vision to make renewable energy sources more accessible to all people," collaborated with him to design the Tree. Strawberry Energy invented the world's first public solar charger for mobile devices, and Strawberry Tree Black is a continuation of their exemplary design. The 4.5-meter-tall structure enables visitors to recharge batteries on phones, tablets and other gadgets in Tašmajdan Park in Belgrade, Serbia. It was officially unveiled this past November.

The team picked Tašmajdan Park because it is "the sunniest, the most accessible and attractive place" in the Palilula municipality, which was a major funder of the Tree. Milivojevic also noted that the park is in the center of Belgrade and thus has "a special place in the hearts of its citizens."

The Strawberry Tree Black resembles--wait for it--a tree, only its branches prop up a black rectangular solar panel. Milivojevic said this design was difficult to create because the panels dictate both the geometry of the Tree's orientation and its angle requirements, which during the design phase often conflicted with what he held as the structure's ideal shape. He wanted to make the work as aesthetically pleasing as possible because a lot of folks consider solar panels ugly, not least because they're ofen used as "limpets on building roofs." He hopes that advancing technology will allow architects to use progress materials that are based on solar energy, such as solar mortar.

But it's his first-ever competitive entry that is "especially dear" to Milivojevic. The piece, called "Connection Wall," was a conceptual project that imagined a globe-spanning chain of interconnected restaurants that implements high-resolution digital computer screens to connect morning coffee drinkers with, say, their families eating dinner in a disparate cities throughout the world.

The young, prolific architect is currently working on the interior design for a new fast food restaurant, as well as concept designs for new park equipment. No matter what project he's working on, though, Milivojevic is still fixated on fashion's relationship with building design. Fashion "allows me complete design freedom, not conditioned by any funder or client," he said. It's maybe only a matter of time until his solar work allots him enough clout to build sui generis pieces without the influence of any backers. Either way, the green movement has never looked this good.