'Death to Fascism, Freedom to the People.' The Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, formerly known as the Museum of Revolution, was damaged during the siege of Sarajevo - now they have different exhibits inside, but kept this symbolic graphic of the old Museum, with the also symbolic signs of destruction. Image courtesy of Paula Szejnfeld-Sirkis.
MSc City Design and Social Science students visited Sarajevo from 18-23 May 2014, at the invitation of the Faculty of Architecture and the Centre for Refugee and IDP Studies (CESI), Institute for Social Science Research, University of Sarajevo. Over a busy few days students, along with Professor Fran Tonkiss and Dr David Madden, explored the city and took part in workshops with faculty, research students and staff from these and other institutions, plus practitioners, arranged by MSc City Design alumnus Gruia Badescu (class of 2009). Gruia is researching Sarajevo as part of his PhD at Cambridge, looking at the connection between urban reconstruction and coming to terms with the past. See their schedule (PDF).
Images
The images below are by our students Regina Kertapati (RK), Sobia Rafiq (SR) and Paula Szejnfeld-Sirkis (PSS).
Sarajevo cityscape (RK)
Bullet-hole riddled building (RK)
Living with the damage (PSS)
Out in the street (SR)
In the museum (SR): 'On our visit to the museum, we were taken through a the history of the war as well as the developments post war. The tour on the whole was an extremely disturbing and emotional one as the atrocities of war were graphically exhibited. Our guide in the museum, a young woman, shared with us her experiences from the war – the way they educated themselves, their tiny basement homes, genocides and lost relatives.'
Graveyard (RK)
Statue (PSS)
Dylan Bulkeley, left with backpackers (RK)
The group with (front from left) Sobia Rafiq, Fran Tonkiss and Gruia Badescu
Reconstructing Sarajevo
Following the field trip, Sofia Garcia and Bronwyn Kotzen edited Reconstructing Sarajevo: negotiating socio-political complexity, a publication that aims to bring together discourse from planners, academics, architects and students to converge and work towards an understanding of the link between politics, urban planning and architecture, and society in the sustainable urban development of the city. To read the publication (PDF) with contributions by their fellow students Elizabeth DeWolf, Serena Girani, Claudia Sinatra and Paula Szejnfeld Sirkis (Dynamic Reflections on Sarajevo: an open dialogue on memory, identity and the city) and Ida Lien, Sobia Rafiq and Thomas Walker (The Olympic Bulevar: In-betweenness and peripheries in Sarajevo), Cities alum Gruia Badescu and others, click on image right.