academic design studios
This is the work of Design Studio 4 - a Masters design studio operating under the Oxford Brookes School of Architecture RIBA Part 2 Masters programme (MArchD) where studio founder, Louise, assisted as Design Tutor.
Here you will find a summary of the studios interests, research and work during the academic year of 2017-2018 within the city of Sarajevo, Bosina Herzegovina.
Design Tutors;
Professor Nicholas Boyarsky (lead) | Jason Coleman | Louise Cann
Technology Tutors;
Barti Garibaldo | Jason Coleman
Thank you to our critics and hosts;
Peter Lang, Lorenzo Romito, Senada Demirovic, Senka Ibrimisobegovic, Emina Camdzic
DS4’s interests are based on a direct physical engagement with the city and architecture, and a commitment to thinking through making. We site our research in the Baltikans project, a collaborative exploration of the former communist controlled fringe of the Baltics and the Balkans. The project has to date worked in Estonia, and Mostar in Bosnia Herzegovina, with students from Sweden, Finland, Bosnia and the Stalker Group from Rome. This year we worked in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and the site of the siege from 1992-1996.
Our studio ethos requires close contact with cities and collaboration and dialogue with key players and issues on the ground. We worked alongside our Bosnian client, the NGO ADA (Art, Dialogue, Architecture), and held a workshop at the Sarajevo School of Architecture with graduate students from Stockholm’s Royal Institue of Art and students from Sarajevo. The workshop, 'Urban Memory and Imagination in the Age of Market Speculation’ was joined by Lorenzo Romito of the Stalker Group from Rome together with local Bosnian architects, artists and theorists. The workshop was immersive and performative.
The studio’s work is focussed on crafting material and fictional narratives in the fast moving present where new alliances and divisions are emerging which are blurring memories, and politicising identities. We work at different scales, from infrastructural landscapes to detailed observations of material transformations. We focus on how narratives and material propositions can forge new relationships with the anthropocene.
Projects are based on researching the rich and diverse urban landscapes of Sarajevo, once known as the ‘Jerusalem of Europe’. Students explored and catalogued the interfaces between the natural conditions of the site, the historic city, the infrastructures and visionary socialist architectures of Tito’s Yugoslavia and the overwhelming traces of siege and conflict, known as urbicide. Current uncontrolled neo-liberal developments (‘turbo architecture’) were contrasted with the rituals and iconography of the ancient Bogomils, with Islamic traditions of architecture and city building, and the contingent city that has developed was measured against the aspirations and search for identity of the Bosnians that were met.
We studied the visionary architectural works of Bogdan Bogdanovic, Vjenceslav Richter and Juraj Neidhardt to provide a context for our work.
Images
In order of appearance; Emily Wright © | Barney Newton © | Akshar Daby © | Chhavi Mehta © | Marija Milosevic © | Marc David ©
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