Summary

The objective of this historical exploration was to determine the link between historical transitions and urban development, focusing on the genesis and evolution of open public spaces and public facilities in Sarajevo. Transitions and fragmented histories generally assume political instability and a lack of socio-cultural continuity. In Sarajevo, the legacy of such a dynamic historical trajectory was embodied in its valuable architectural heritage and cultural pluralism. The question that permeates this chapter is: how have the periodical changes of regimes affected the mind-set of the citizens of Sarajevo, their collective spirit and their shared values, and ultimately, their attitude towards the notion of their shared, public space?

The creation of public spaces was scarce in the city’s 15th-century transition from the medieval town of Vrhbosna to Ottoman Sarajevo. The Ottoman era clearly favoured the intimacy of private life over the collectivity of public life. One omnipresent architectural element – the wall – served as the acoustic and visual divide between public and private spaces, communal and family life, and secular and spiritual realms. All Ottoman typologies – houses, bazaars, hans and mosques – followed the typical meander compositional schemes with interior atriums, enabling a gradual sequencing of spaces from the public exterior to the private interior realm.

By the end of the 19th century, Sarajevo had become the venue of a genuine encounter between East and West. The transition of urban development is legible in the city: Ottoman and Habsburg areas sit side-by-side in chronological alignment. During the latter era, Sarajevo was modernised and westernised according to the models of European cities, and gained

new public architectural typologies, designed in the formal language of neoclassical, neo-Renaissance, pseudo-Moorish and secession styles. To a degree, the exterior appearance of the administrative, cultural and educational buildings of the time expressed social exclusivity, though they allowed limited accessibility to the public. The development of open public spaces in Habsburg Sarajevo was less expressed.

The Early Yugoslav period, referred to by locals as the “inter-war” period, yielded the first progressive modernist public and residential buildings in Sarajevo, predominantly interpolations into existing AustroHungarian urban blocks. The contrast between the historical and modern facades epitomises the fin-de-siecle historical transition. Urban issues and the notion of public space were present only on paper, in theoretical discourse and architectural design competitions.

The Socialist Yugoslav expansion of Sarajevo honoured the socialistmodernist urban utopia. By bridging ethnic diversities in a universal design language, the marriage between modernism and Yugoslav socialism in the form of a Non-Aligned architectural brand successfully celebrated the ideals of “brotherhood and unity” and “self-management”. The first two decades after WWII were marked by the strategic development of public buildings for the purposes of administration, education, health, and public services, and by the particular typology of Houses of Culture, which promoted the socialist ideal of “bringing culture to the masses”. The development of public buildings and cultural and sports facilities for large gatherings – which promoted national unity and controlled the socio-cultural life of Sarajevo and its surroundings – was boosted in the 1970s, prior to the city hosting the XIV Winter Olympic Games.

This period of socialist utopia was replaced by the 1990s war, urbicide, and a three-year state of dystopia. The contemporary era of Sarajevo’s urban development has so far been characterised by a prolonged postsocialist, post-conflict and postmodern transition. Privatisation and the

uncritical acceptance of globalist capitalist values discarded the urban and architectural legacy of previous eras. Shopping malls have become the city’s new temples of consumerist society, analogous to what sports centres were to socialism, civic buildings were to the Habsburg era, and religious buildings were to the Ottoman period. The new developments fit the definition of pseudo-public spaces, which is an echo of the global condition. It seems, however, that the crisis of public spaces in Sarajevo is amplified by one of socio-cultural identity. The traumatic abolition of the ideals of “brotherhood and unity” caused a predominantly negative bias towards attributes such as “communist” or “socialist” among the general population, which is reflected in a negative attitude towards the socialist architectural legacy. The collective identity crisis, in addition to the foggy economic and political circumstances of unregulated privatisation, contributed to the appropriation, loss or fragmentation of public spaces and intra-block communal areas throughout the city.

Visible traces of socio-political transitions in Sarajevo’s urban fabric – contrasting, blurring, overlapping, and interlocking fragments – contribute to its powerful and unique cultural image on a global level. The historical timeline of the city’s evolution is visible in its urbanmorphological alignment, where public architectural typologies of various socio-cultural provenience stand side-by-side. At the same time, spatiophysical and mental thresholds, gaps and grey-areas, are witnesses to the lack of cultural and urban continuity. What has happened to the perception of a collective/shared identity, in a society that represents the ideals of multiculturalism and co-existence? The transitory condition or state of in-betweenness is manifested as the condition between preand post-, between here and there, between public and private, and between us and them. Repeated and often dramatic transitions led to a collective identity crisis, which subsequently caused a public space crisis in the city of Sarajevo. More than two decades after the last sociopolitical transition is sufficient time to address this crisis in a studious and

strategic manner. The antidote for a fragmented and disconnected urban context is in the (re)evolutionary quest for continuity, and in finding a meaningful role for ambiguous, in-between places: “There is still another method, a method of continuity – a continuity of spirit and continuity of evolution; including also revolutions that mark the way”23 (Grabrijan & Neidhardt, 1957).

23 Written by Le Corbusier in 1957 for the preface of the book “Architecture of Bosnia and the way modernity” by Dusan Grabrijan and Juraj Neidhardt.