Kerim Silajdžić Architecture Portfolio 2023

education and work

formal education

1997 Born in Visoko

2012-2016studyingatGymnasiumVisoko

2016-2020studyingarchitectureatUniversityofSarajevo

2021startingmasterstudiesatIUAVUniveristadiVenezia

informal education

2018SarajevoandtheSiege:BetweenoccupationandfreedomWorkshop

by:ScanLABProjects/ProjectVArchitecture (1.prizeatinternational21.SalonarhitektureNoviSad)

2019TimberHighriseSeminar

by:InstituteofArchitecture-UniveristyofStuttgart

2020ConservationandrestorationofoutdoorsculpturesWorkshop

by:DepartmentofConservationandRestauration-UniveristyofSplit

2020SitePlanningCourse

by:DepartmentofArchitectureattheMassachusettsInstituteofTechnology.

membership

since 2020memberof AssociationofArchitectsofBosniaandHerzegovina

since 2020 MemberofUGLULikum76AssociationofFineArtists

employment

2021ProjectArchitect

employer:Stellard.o.o.Sarajevo

2020 ArchitecturalDrafter

employer:Consiliumd.o.oKakanj

since 2019FreelanceFilmPosterDesigner200+clients

2019 ConservationandRestorationof CulturalHeritageofBosniaandHerzegovina(Stećci)

employer:NativeMuseumofVisoko

2020ConservationandRestorationArcheologicalfindingsofaRomanVilla employer:NativeMuseumofVisoko

skills

software

Autodesk AutoCAD

Autodesk Revit

SketchUp

Rhinocheros

AdobePhotoshop

Adobe Illustrator

AdobeInDesign analog

FreehandDrawing

PhysicalModelling

Writing

languages

Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Montenegrin(Native/Billingual)

English(TOEFL,C3)

German (Conversational)

Italian (Conversational) contacts

adress

CalledelaPieta5218,Venice,Italy

email:

kerim_silajdzic@hotmail.com

phone:

+39 351 98 59 792

Contents:

1.TempleofNothing

2. Grotta Carsica

3. Chiesa de le Terese

4. Festina Lente

5. Red Line

6. Master Studies Sketches

Temple of Nothing

: Kerim Silajdžić

AXIOM 1

TWO PARALLEL LINES SHALL NEVER MEET IN A POINT

As you feel what in circumstances that do not involve another person would be a draft felt on your neck, you come to the realisation that all your thoughts constructed with each previous step were in vain, because you never met. The eventualities were stored away on a dusty shelf, never to be used again, only accessible in times of contemplation. The person is now behind you and they will never exist together with you in time. They never have.

AXIOM 2

TWO UNPARALLEL LINES SHALL MEET IN A POINT, SUBSEQUENTLY DIVERGING FOREVER

For a brief moment you will share the same plane of existence. It is unevitable, but it is finite, because you’ve met. The enchantment of that moment solely depends on the thoughts born in the anticipation of it. How many thoughts are you able to squeeze into a single moment in time and how are they supposed to flourish in such a narrow space? How do you anticipate the after effects of the collision? Should you?

AXIOM 3

THE PAST IS JUST A MASK F OR ANGER

Now that you are hovering over your former self, is it fair to say that you did not think it would look like this? That you would ever look and feel the way you looked and felt? The changes you have never thought were possible have occured and they are bound to you as much as anything you have ever felt in your life. You are looking at a stranger who was incapable of conceving its being in another form and the naivety of that thought makes you smile.

AXIOM 4

THE FUTURE IS A SCENT UNKNOWN

It will take everything you have ever felt. Everything you have ever seen. Everything you have ever heard. Everything you have ever smelled, tasted and touched. You are discovering your blindness for the first time, which means that you have never experienced light of such illumination. The path is unrehearsed and may lead to the very place you are standing in now. It may never end.

Daniela Reina • Kerim Silajdzic • Lester Gutierrez

Grotta Carsica

Daniela Reina Abril, Lester Guiterrez, Kerim Silajdžić

The chapel allows for complete absorption into the surrounding and the participation without experiencing the protagonistic tendencies our everyday life has made so common. It is an exercise in humility.

By isolating the users of the space, they recognize that their acts are being overlooked and they are not able to indulge in the sensation of being the saviour. They have no feedback, at first because they are underground in an area of diluted light, and subsequently behind a window that reveals an area of an overwhelming presence of light.

They are not given the rights to interfere with the native species that inhabit the environment and risk imposing any form of change, whether it is progress or regress. It forces the users of the space to accept the ecosystem as it is, while enhancing the current pathway in the forest. They are there just as viewers.

The site of the chapel is located towards the end of the path of Via Lucis having with a view over the Sacro Monte in Varese, Italy. The site includes a cave and belvedere path which are to become the two focal points of the chapel. The chapel itself acts as a path, as an appendix of the original path, connecting both points, from the shadow of the cave to the light of the mountain top. A path from dark to light.

The entrance intends to blend into the forest and the stone of the cave. The tunnel is an underpass morphed into a cantilevered building, introducing the view over the forest and the town.

The third and last part of the sequence is to be revealed in the end of the chapel that finalizes the connection between the building and the surrounding terrain and the gradual path towards the light.

After the entrance through the grotta and the begining of the sequence that leads the visitor towards indications of light that seap through from the left side we reach the wall of light that takes on the role of an altar that connects the visitor with the terrain and the village via the view.

The Concept The Object The Materials

Because we are dealing with an object that has been conceived as a cantilever that begins as an underground tunnel on a hill side - the main structural material of the chapel is reinforeced concrete. First in the act of a sustaining wall, and after as a cantilever.

In order to create the sequences of light integrated into the chapel we have designed the facade oriented towards the forest as a permeable gabion wall that allows for flexibility in light design. It lends itself to be manipulated in the process of creating of a light pattern that gradually reveals the altar in the final part.

The combination of materials should not stand out as a synthetic limb, but represent a continuation of the natural properties of the cave which the chapel extrudes from. They are heavy, but desaturated and unassuming.

Chiesa delle Terese

Identity Year

Location

Type

Mentor

Authors

: Iron

: 2023

: Venice, Italy

: Museum, Exhibition Space

: Marco Magni, Daniel Trabucco, Scarpa

: Daniela Reina Abril, Lester Guiterrez, Kerim Silajdžić

Natural oxydation of the metal mesh occuring over the period of 25 years follows the forming of the patina of the ramp. Both exhibitions form complementary tones between eachother and the red marble layers of Chiesa delle Terese.

Natural development of patina on the perforated copper ramp over the period of 25 years follows the oxydation process of the metal mesh. Both exhibitions form complementary tones between eachother and the red marble layers of Chiesa delle Terese.

Rectangular

10 12

anchor plate

bolts tube

Perforated copper railing cm bolts for fundation

anchor plate finish

hollow section column

profile structure stairs

stairs

plate for the stairs

3. Anchor bolts

4. Anchor tube

5.

h= 0.90 cm

6. Anchor bolts for fundation

7. Surface anchor plate

8. Floor finish

9. Round hollow section column

TYPE OC.

10. .steel profile structure stairs

11. steel stairs

12. Anchor plate for the stairs

TYPE PTR

2. Surface anchor plate

3. Anchor bolts

4. Anchor tube

5. 6. Perforated copper railing

h= 0.90 cm

6. Anchor bolts for fundation

7. Surface anchor plate

8. Floor finish

9. Round hollow section column

TYPE OC.

10. .steel profile structure stairs

11. steel stairs

12. Anchor plate for the stairs

Detail 3 esc 1:8

2. Surface anchor plate

6. Perforated copper railing

Detail 2 esc 1:5

Detail 3 esc 1:8

Structural section / steel frame for the ramp

Perspective view / ramp ending

Perspective view / temporary exhibition

Because it hosts Venice, it has to be a paradox. It needs to host both the inevitability of decay that is linked with the passage of time, and the stamina to hold each period of its long history in an equal manner.

It is perhaps the greatest of properties of the city, each time you return something is missing, but it is replaced by something new somewhere else and yet the city remains the same. This capability of Venice to remain the same after each stone is replaced is what has made it the jewel of the Adriatic for centuries.

The exibitions are supposed to introduce an imaginary version of Venice, one that has been rejected or impossible to finalize, either fully or partly. It has remained in progress, always waiting to be modified and to be maintained by its citizens.

During the design process a lot of decisions were rejected because their execution and the preservation of Chiesa delle Terese was mutually exclusive. The task at hand was one that probihited pressuring the walls or the ceiling with any intensity. It requested of us to create a structure within a structure, without compromising the aesthetic of not just this church, but sacral architecture as a whole. It also had to host the exhibition pieces, both for the permanent one and the temporary exhbitions, while manifesting the image of Venice.

The abstraction of the Grand Canal allowed us to create a central lighting system that acts as a guide and a partition wall which defines the areas. The temporary exhibition wraps around it, leaving the church intact and open as it always was, an exhibition in and of itself.

Through the material use we brought the world of blacksmithing and shipbuilding into the church to allow the design to flow through the surfaces. The steel Grand Canal is to remain intact and stand as a focal point inbtween the temporary movements of the city, and the city itself is to decay as Venice continues to do, after fiftheen centuries.

Everything but the church is metal. Exhibiton stands, exhibition steps, exhibition walls. It is steel, it is iron, it copper. It relies on itself and it speaks for itself. It does not touch the walls of the church nor does it penetrate the sequences of vision the users might have towards the church. It is there as a passage leading to the altar.

Chiesa delle Terese, Venezia

Red Line

Identity Year

Location Type

Mentor

Authors

: Permeability : 2022

: Staten Island, New york, USA

: Hybrid Housing Complex

: Aldo Aymonino, Marco Monpillero, Luigi Latini

: Daniela Reina Abril, Lester Guiterrez, Aye Chann Maung Kerim Silajdžić

While defining the hierarchy of parameters that need to be accounted for within the project we have established permeability as the paramount one. We wanted Stapleton to seep into the island.

Although it was unclear how it was supposed to be translated into form at first, we kept following the existing geometry of the site and focused on the pier being the primary moving element of that translation. It offered itself to be renovated and reimagined as a line leading into Stapleton from the rest of Staten Island and allow for a future development which merges usage of not just function but of class structure that is currently rigid. The pier was to be turned into a connection both to Staten Island as an extention, and to Manhattan as a visual peisage, a ferry ride away.

The building itself should follow the same code. It is not just allowing communication to physically go through it, but it is a mixed entity, both functionally and economically. The building offers six types of apartments that overlap vertically and represent a possibility of young adults, students, elderly, the wealthy and the less fortunate to experience the same life.

Its structure allowed for a hollowed ground floor that introduced program which liberates the building from exclusivity and allows for complete public immersion without safety hazards. The axis shift advances views and visual connections that the building has with the promenade, while preserving individual longitudinal properties.

A Warren truss exo-skeleton structure allowed us to carve out the view towards the south and introduce an inscribed dome above the amphitheatre which is the only point where the two programmes meet along both axes. It was partly a an aesthetical statement of renovation in aim to preserve the sentimentality layers of a dock and an industrial complex present on the waterfront. To let people from the island finish their daily walks there and to experience the pier as a cultural form.

Stapleton Waterfront

Stapleton Waterfront

The first two types represent affordable homes which do not offer a luxurious amount of space but whose value is compensated by the views afforded by the design of the building itself. They are student apartments/studios, capsules of research and study, hidden between expensive apartments that stretch vertically across two floors and offer a place on the Staten Island bay area for those who do not seek a space that can host a family. We wanted to implement the possibility of a lateral move, while being in the same building if someone does decide to scale down or desires a bigger space without completely restructuring a life.

Waterfront

Waterfront

The second two types represent family apartments. They are decently sized apartment that offer an upgrade from a studio with the introduction of an additional sleeping chamber (in the case of type C) and an additional master bedroom and bathroom (in the case of type D). The apartments are also upgraded in terms of visual experience with extended access to the facade light and a double exposure allowing sun to penetrate both the sleeping chambers and the living spaces. Designed to create a community within a community together with a studio apartment that might host a younger neighbour or a student.

The third two types represent luxury. They are duplexes with three bedrooms and a gallery space that can host up to 6 inhabitants. The living spaces are completely separated from the private parts of the apartment and both types offer extended views and balconies. They have integrated large living rooms with kitchens that overlook the bay, storage units and connections to the gallery for additional ceiling height. Designed to be either family apartments or apartments that can have a up to six co-habitants and merge with the studio and student apartments.

1

-Section 1

Exploded Axonometric 1

Stapleton Waterfront

A119 Axonometric

Axonometric view / structural components

Festina Lente

Identity Year

Location Type

Mentor

Authors

: Levels

: 2023

: Schio, Italy

: Institute for Fashion Design

: Sebastián Irarrázaval, Emmanuela Sorbo, Salvatore Russo

: Daniela Reina Abril, Christina Camacho, Kerim Silajdžić

Visualizing how does the object of interest relate to existing fabric and the potential it holds both as an urban element and an isolated piece of history

Uncovering visual and logistical pathways that sew together the public square with the existing water stream and the connection to the San Rocco church

Programmatic analysis of the existing fabric around Fabbrica Alta underlines

Encompassing green ring around square in order to return the square to a human scale while preserving permeability that ties the masterplan to the existing fabric

An addition of three monumental concrete urban elements which follow the existing inclination of the terrain and divide the square into units by height and visual block, while preserving the connection to the park, church and the city.

Final urban proposal

Perspective view / proposed vertical communication area

05 . Master Studies Sketches

4x4 House Tadao Ando Architects & Associates

The Louvre Pyramid Pei Cobb Freed & Associates

Innovation Center UC Elemental

V&A Dundee Kengo Kuma & Associates

Plot #1282

DW5

Nemo Science Center

Renzo Piano