Architecture, Urban Space and War: The Destruction and Reconstruction of Sarajevo (Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict)

✍ Scribed by Mirjana Ristic

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 267
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book investigates architectural and urban dimensions of the ethnic-nationalist conflict in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, during and after the siege of 1992–1995. Focusing on the wartime destruction of a portion of the cityscape in central Sarajevo and its post-war reconstruction, re-inscription and memorialization, the book reveals how such spatial transformations become complicit in the struggle for reconfiguration of the city’s territory, boundaries and place identity. Drawing on original research, the study highlights the capacities of architecture and urban space to mediate terror, violence and resistance, and to deal with heritage of the war and act a catalyst for ethnic segregation or reconciliation. Based on a multi-disciplinary methodological approach grounded in architectural and urban theory, the spatial turn in critical social theory and assemblage thinking, as well as techniques of spatial analysis, in particular morphological mapping, the book provides an innovative spatial framework for analyzing the political role of contemporary cities.

✦ Table of Contents

Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Warscapes: Introduction
The City:War Assemblage
Mapping Warscapes
Sarajevo Warscapes
Outline of the Book
A Book About Conflict Versus Conflict About a Book
References
Chapter 2: Cities, Nationalism and Conflict
Nationalism in Architecture and Urban Space
The ‘-Cides’ of War
Architects as Military
Dealing with Difficult Heritage
Dealing with Painful Memories
Toward a New Approach to the Study of City and War
References
Chapter 3: Topography of Terror: Sniping and Shelling of Urban Space
Landscape of Fear
Sniper Alley
Shelling and Massacres in Public Spaces
Rethinking Urbicide
References
Chapter 4: Landscape of Ruins: Targeting Architecture
Warchitecture
Infrastructural Warfare
Weapons Against the State: Destruction of Political Institutions
Targeting as Forgetting: Destruction of Cultural Heritage
Architecture and Violence
References
Chapter 5: Resistance
Burrowing Underground
Adaptation of Urban Morphology
Patterns of Wartime Urban Life
The Metamorphosis of Sarajevo’s Apartment Buildings
Architects as Rebels: Construction as a Weapon Against Destruction
Insurgent Place-making as a Tool for the City’s Defense
References
Chapter 6: Rebordering Sarajevo
Post-war Sarajevo
Place, Discourse, Territory
Mapping Spatial Division Between Sarajevo and East Sarajevo
Spatial Coding of Urban Territory
Spatial Inscriptions of Identity
Forgetting Shared Spatial Symbols
Border-crossing as a Spatial Practice
Intangible Borders
References
Chapter 7: Specter of War
Covering Wounds: The Parliament and Government Complex
Reconstructing as Forgetting: The Oslobodjenje Newspaper Building
Reconstructing as Replicating: City Hall—National Library
Invention of Tradition: Post-war Religious Architecture
Reconstruction as Conflict by Other Means
References
Chapter 8: Painful Memories and Parallel Histories
Sarajevo Roses
Memorial Plaques
The Monument to the Murdered Children of the Besieged Sarajevo 1992–1995
The Cross on Zlatište Hill
Absences of Memory
Post-war Counter-memorials
Entangled Pasts
References
Chapter 9: Lessons from Sarajevo
Architecture, Urban Space and Political Ideologies
Assembling and Mapping the City and Conflict
Design as a Catalyst for Societal Changes
Welcome Back to the Olympic Sarajevo
References
References
Index