In March 2024 we spent five wonderful days in Sarajevo with eleven students from Syracuse School of Architecture and Yale University, led by Visiting Fellow Christina Zhang. Their trip was part of the project “A Seed for a Song: Urban Seed Libraries as Memory Vessels,” led by Christina Zhang in collaboration with Smirna Kulenović and Kuma International.
As part of the course, students participated in a series of workshops led by our colleagues and friends:
Claudia Zini (Kuma International)
Smirna Kulenović (Berlin University of Arts)
Dunja Krvavac (Dani Arhitekture)
Selma Ćatović Hughes (American University of Sharjah)
Ismar Čirkinagić (Independent Visual Artist)
Ena Kukić (Graz University of Technology)
Lejla Odobašić (International BURCH University)
Nasiha Pozder (University of Sarajevo)
As place-makers, how do we make hopeful and benevolent spaces in a post-traumatic city? Spending years in darkness before it germinates and grows, a seed is a powerful metaphor for resilience and hope in difficult times. In Sarajevo, seeds are rich in meaning; they carry generations of indigenous knowledge, represent wartime memories, and invite people to collectively care, imagine and plant a new landscape.
Students are learning to translate rigorous on-site research into sensitive design solutions by designing a series of small-scale “seed libraries” located on the public streets of Sarajevo. These urban seed libraries will not only showcase and transmit seeds of indigenous plants, but also collect and tell oral histories about these plants, and provide spaces for gathering, sharing, and other public activities. Through this design exercise, students will explore architecture’s power to tell stories, connect, and heal.