Non-aligned City: Urban Laboratory of the new Sarajevo

Sarajevo’s contested position at the intersection of geopolitical ‘tectonic plates’ – situated between Rome and Byzantium, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, the Western and Eastern Bloc, de-colonization and re-colonization – resulted in both fertile periods of exchange and moments of devastating conflicts. This inbetweenness has contributed to the (dis)continuous cityscape, characterized by a diversity of spatial productions and radical urban transformations. Therefore, Sarajevo represents an urban laboratory for social and spatial transformation processes. The ETHZ/UTT ‘Urban Toolbox’ provided a cross-scalar methodological approach for examining the physical typology, program, and actors of Sarajevo’s urbanism, spanning from spatial and stakeholder analyses synthesized through critical mapping to the identification of strategic scenarios and the use of digital media. This dissertation zooms both in and out on three time periods between 1945 and 2014, defined by three distinct revolutionary moments. The central theme of this project is the examination of the transformative processes with the focus on the district of Marijin Dvor in New Sarajevo. Previously a peripheral zone, it became a central operational laboratory of the new Sarajevo to test the effects of major geopolitical shifts on the 'heart' and 'brain' of the city. While investigating multiple spatial crystallization points, one building epitomized the correlation between geopolitical power and space – the Museum of the Revolution – a living symbol of the three periods of construction, destruction and fragmentation. The proclamation of Tito’s communist revolution in 1945 and the establishment of a socialist Yugoslav federation, created pressing spatial demands for the new urban proletariat. The industrialization and rural-urban migration gave birth to the city’s first strategic urbanistic model, enabled by proclaiming the collectivization of land as a common good. The City Planning Institute developed the first General Urban Plan (GUP-Generalni Urbanistički Plan) in 1961. This large-scale urban planning instrument was enabled by the Yugoslav decentralized model of self-management that also included the ‘Mjesne Zajednice’ (MZs), the local communities. These new societal postulates were decisive for the construction of the flagship project for Sarajevo and its nucleus, Marijin Dvor, as a cultural, educational and industrial hub of BiH, one of Yugoslavia’s most ethnically diverse and rural regions. Architects and urbanists were tasked with planning, designing and building a New Sarajevo as a socialist utopia. Buildings, such as the Museum of the Revolution, were constructed as monuments to celebrate both the victory of the partisans over Nazi Germany and the new state design ideology: functionalist modernism. The construction of Marijin Dvor was catalyzed by the Winter Olympic Games, hosted by Sarajevo in 1984 as a result of Yugoslavia’s non-aligned foreign policy and the city’s status as ‘terra neutral`. Later in 1992, as socialist Yugoslavia began to crumble after the geopolitical vacuum of post-1989 Europe, Marijin Dvor became the site of the fruitless peace protests. The city was put under military siege and New Sarajevo was divided along a frontline. Under wartime conditions, the urban utopia was de-urbanized. The collapse of urban infrastructure and the destruction of the human habitat, characterized in Bogdan Bogdanović’s description of urbicide, reached its peak in Sarajevo. During this period, Marijin Dvor went through a radical transformation: public spaces became graveyards or urban-agricultural zones for survival. The Museum of the Revolution found itself at the frontline and was bombed as the symbol of a common Yugoslav past. Nevertheless, in acts of popular resistance, destroyed buildings became temporary art spaces. Derelict parks turned into agricultural zones. This attracted a wave of global solidarity as intellectuals visited Sarajevo, including the architect Lebbeus Woods, and formed a vital part of the antiwar movement, analyzing the destruction and proposing both small adaptations and radical post-war reconstruction visions. However, these visions did not adhere to the post-socialist and post-war realities of the newly ethnically divided Sarajevo resulting from the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. Common properties had been converted into state ones, which were then auctioned off in a massive privatization wave. These policies fell in line with the country’s market liberalization. Within these new realities, MZs maintained the same level of legal status, but under the extreme pressure by neoliberal urban development. New economic and urban mechanisms led to aggressive development driven by investments from across the geopolitical spectrum, which disregarded already destroyed public space in favor of monocultures of generic commercial architecture. Marijin Dvor became a high-density node of real estate speculations and a symbol of socio-economic segregation and spatial fragmentation. The refugia of public space were found in administrative grey-zones of the post-war constitutional changes. Politically contaminated and left out of the legal system and with a new name and no program as a consequence, the Historical Museum, once the Museum of the Revolution, became a host to civic engagements, inviting citizens to figure as curators. This new system and its accompanying urban model revealed ruptures in 2014, symbolized through violent mass protests of the so-called ‘Bosnian Spring’. Impoverished and unemployed, Sarajevans turned their anger and desperation against the city’s governmental buildings. The dissertation includes ‘Reactivate Sarajevo’, an activist experiment of spatial agency that connects theory and practice by engaging in-situ. Influenced by both the pioneers of reflective practice, Donald Schön and Kurt Lewin, and the ETHZ/UTT concept of the activist architect, ‘Reactivate Sarajevo’ exposes the dissertation’s work-in-progress to the public. This discourse was initiated through the organization of expert symposia, stakeholder workshops and open discussions with the general public. The production of discourse, curation of performances and reflection of these actions mutually nurtured the theoretical chapters. These acts spawned critical mapping and alternative design concepts, presented through an interactive digital platform, as well as a strategy of inversion to represent Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2016 at the International Architecture Biennale in Venice for the first time in the country’s history. The exhibition showcased not only critical research, but also alternative design concepts amplifying civic action as a basis for the integrated and inclusive development of Marijin Dvor. The insights were then transferred back to Sarajevo back via the ‘Balkan route’ and the exhibition was installed in the Historical Museum. The Experiment contributed to the creation of a network of formal and informal partnerships locally and laid the groundwork for a future urban design and planning project concerning the future planning of Marijin Dvor and Sarajevo. This approach of action research resonated throughout the Balkans and other regions through workshops, lectures and consultancies and formed the basis for the extrapolation and application of the insights to other cities