This year’s 2-week trip for department 2 occurred in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (1 of 6 federal units in former Yugoslavia). The study trip involves students from every year at the Department 2. Each year class had different assignments and methods of approaching and analyzing the city and eventually relating it to the semester/year project. We are roughly 90 students plus professors, at Department 2.
The assignment for the English Master’s students was to absorb the city on your own and to start thinking of possible sites and a program for your building. Each day we walked for long hours, photographing, sketching, talking to people and essentially just trying to grasp the city. Sarajevo is located on a valley formed by the Dinaric Alps and situates itself along the Milijacka river. Sarajevo is a complex city to analyze without taking in considerations the religious diversity and the recent siege from 1992-1995 where the city was completely excommunicated from the rest of the world. 14 years later physical and psychological scars are still part of the daily life. Most of the buildings in the city carry the memory of the siege on their facades. There are several buildings destroyed and abandoned in the city, particularly some along the Milijacka river. These sites became potential places for some of the projects that we will propose.
Personally, I’m interested in the Sarajevo film festival. The festival started on the last year of the siege and it’s now one of the most important festivals in Europe and the most important of the Balkans. Film has become a very important industry for the city. Cinema in Bosnia and Herzegovina traces back to the 19th century and it has a very strong presence in modern cinema. The program of the building that I will propose include offices for the Film Festival, additional spaces for other programs related to the festival, such as the Sarajevo Talent Campus. Indoors and outdoors screening spaces, film archive and mediatheque, storage spaces. The current offices of the film festival are very limited and there is not a film archive available and accessible after the end of each years festival. If anyone is interested in films for the region I recommend looking into the directors Emir Kusturica, Danis Tanovic, Pjer Zalica, Rajka Grlica. And also if you want to get a sense of the life during and post war in Sarajevo watch Welcome to Sarajevo and Grbavica.
Here are some images of the city and our study trip. More on Sarajevo will follow soon.


Milijacka River


Housing blocks


War scars


Ottoman House


Building post-war