ring of concrete blocks shapes balkan cultural center proposal in rural US town

Aleksa Milojević’s US cultural center shaped by Balkan traditions

Rhapsodist’s Tea Room is a design proposal by New York–based architectural designer Aleksa Milojević for a rural town in the American West, conceived as a cultural archive and public gathering space for a historic Balkan community. Planned for a site opposite a historic church and cemetery, the project extends an existing landscape of remembrance into a new civic commons that combines library, meeting spaces, and areas for cultural exchange.

The proposal draws from South Slavic epic poetry, a longstanding tradition of oral composition structured through performance, collective memory, and communal listening. Early twentieth-century field recordings in the Balkans documented this practice and informed broader understandings of how long narrative works are shaped and transmitted across generations. The project translates these principles into architectural form, using spatial organization to support gathering, exchange, and shared attention.

view from the garden, across the gumno, towards the building and church | all architectural models and renderings by Aleksa Milojevic; collaged scale figure retrieved from 19th-century Austrian publication

Rhapsodist’s Tea Room sets cultural heritage as shared practice

At the center of the design is the gumno, a circular threshing floor that historically functioned as a communal forum and performance space. In the Tea Room, the gumno is reinterpreted as an outdoor circular gathering area that organizes the site as both commons and stage. A ring of concrete blocks, derived from an epic narrative structure, defines the perimeter. These elements function as seating during events while also forming a spatial field that is engaged through movement and shifting viewpoints.

The building adopts the geometry of the gumno within its interior layout by translating the circle into a center-oriented library space. This main chamber is lined with integrated seating and shelving and serves as the project’s spatial and programmatic core. Surrounding this space are flexible areas for workshops, dining, exhibitions, and meetings, which can be opened to create a continuous interior environment. Visual connections and long sightlines link the library to the surrounding rooms, the outdoor gumno to the west, and the churchyard to the east. Through these relationships, the project by designer Aleksa Milojević positions cultural heritage as an active practice, supported by spatial frameworks that emphasize gathering, performance, and shared presence rather than static display.

view from the garden, across the gumno, towards the building and church

creek front patio

view along the street

street-front facade, as seen from the cemetery

vignette of the streetfront facade

reading nook, looking through the window towards the gumno and park

main gathering space & library, looking towards the cemetery and church

main gathering space & library, looking towards the cemetery and church

master plan, diagram of outdoor spaces | drawing by Aleksa Milojevic

project info:

name: Rhapsodist’s Tea Room
designer: Aleksa Milojević

location: US

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

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