Yugoslav Modernism Meets Japanese Listening Bars at Esthetic Joys Embassy Belgrade.

There’s a kind of thrill in watching design pilgrims swerve away from the usual design capitals and toward cities with grittier, more interesting stories to tell. Belgrade has been accumulating exactly this kind of momentum, and the latest arrival to the Serbian capital’s design conversation makes a persuasive case for booking the flight. Esthetic Joys Embassy (EJE) Belgrade — a hybrid dining room, discothèque and forthcoming hotel — has opened inside the boutique Pavilion Hotel at Dobračina 39, deep in the Dorćol neighbourhood.

The Embassy concept itself deserves unpacking. Esthetic Joys is a creative collective originally formed in Moscow in 2016, which relocated outward in 2022 and opened its first Embassy in Yerevan that same year. The team describes each Embassy as a place for gathering across cultures and regardless of geopolitics, built on what they call cultural ping-pong — every new outpost a fresh conversation with its city rather than a copy of the last.

Form Follows Feelings: Devon Turnbull and Karimoku Craft Wooden Speakers That Stir the Soul.

This three-floor exhibition of wooden speakers, immersive listening environments, and acoustic panels is inspired by traditional Japanese folding screens, anchored in the concept of Ma—the meaningful space between silence and sound.

For Belgrade, EJ enlisted Supaform, the studio founded by artist and designer Maxim Scherbakov, whose work has long traded in nostalgic-yet-knowing references to design history. (We last covered his deliciously functionless Hidden Entourage exhibition in Rome.) The pairing feels almost inevitable.

The spatial concept is a speculative dreamscape that filters Yugoslav modernism of the late 1950s and early 1960s through a postmodern, mildly hallucinatory lens. The key reference is the K67 kiosk — Saša Mächtig’s 1966 modular icon, whose rounded geometry looks equally at home on a Belgrade street corner or a lunar crater. Scherbakov runs with that aerodynamic optimism and lets it bloom: oval light panels wash the ceiling in shifting glow, 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 bar occupies a historically significant 1960s apartment block. The design embraces original socialist features through contemporary materials.

Then there’s the sound. A pair of vintage JBL 4435 studio monitors and a curated vinyl library anchor what’s essentially a Japanese listening bar transplanted to the Balkans. On the far side of the bar, six ichiran-style booths let you draw a curtain, slip on headphones and disappear entirely. The sofas are upholstered in original London Underground moquette — the very last run of Misha Black’s District line pattern, sourced direct from the mill.

Add a yoshoku-leaning Japanese kitchen helmed by Moscow-based chef Katsuhiko Kobayashi (bisque ramen sharing menu space with hambagu, the Japanese cousin of Serbia’s beloved pljeskavica), graphics by artist Ilona Skorobulatova, and music programming by Ignat Akimov and Igor Horozović, and the picture sharpens. EJE Belgrade isn’t trying to be anywhere else. It’s trying to be everywhere at once — and somehow, in Dorćol, it absolutely lands.

Voce at Triennale Milano Elevates Music to Museum-Worthy Art Status.

Triennale's president Stefano Boeri envisions music as fine art, creating exclusive works appreciable only on-site.

[Images courtesy of Supaform. Photography by Varvara Toplennikova.]