Kuma International Architecture Month 2020
Online edition on ZOOM and Facebook live
OCTOBER 6 – 29 2020
Every Tuesday and Thursday at 19:00 CEST
In 2019 Kuma International held its first Kuma International Architecture Week “Unfolding Sarajevo”, a weeklong event that unfolded the multitude of Sarajevo’s rich architectural layers to comprehend its contemporary identity and propose what might be the direction of the future development of the Bosnian capital.
This year, due to the circumstances of the global pandemic, the second edition of the Kuma International program dedicated to architecture will take place during the entire month of October online on Zoom. The program will host a series of lectures with architects and professors from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States and Austria.
Lectures will start on Tuesday, October 6 at 19:00 CEST and they will run every Tuesday and Thursday until October 29, 2020. The program is coordinated by Lejla Odobašić Novo and Claudia Zini.
Our guests will include:
· Armina Pilav from the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield
· Paul Lowe from the University of the Arts London
· Ena Kukić from Graz University of Technology
· Sabina Tanović from Delf University of Technology
· Azra Akšamija from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
· Amra Hadžimuhamedović of the Center for Cultural Heritage, International Forum Bosnia
· Igor Kuvač from Istraživački centar za prostor and the University of Banja Luka
· Nasiha Pozder from the University of Sarajevo
The program’s theme will be “Architecture and Resilience”, a timely topic given our current circumstances. It will reflect the notion of resilience in its many facets and how it is reflected through architecture, particularity in the Bosnian and Herzegovinian context. The topics of discussion will be as follows: “Resilience under destruction”, “Memory and resilience”, “Resilience through culture” and “Division and resilience”.
The most discernible reading of the term “resilience” suggests a certain kind of immunity to trauma, overcoming the state of emergency and bouncing back to “normalcy”. Given the current global state of affairs, this term has been applied to many different spheres with an expectation or hope of transcendence into a future of normalcy.
However, this is also a term that mostly lacks strenuous analysis and is more often used as a label establishing the positive properties of something. On closer examination, the meaning of the word (and that which it is applied to) becomes less clear. Is a resilient individual one who adjusts quickly to new circumstances or one who suppresses all memory of trauma? Is a resilient material fundamentally altered during the event but not after? What of resilient architecture and ultimately the resilient city?
Kuma International Architecture Month looks to challenge the positivity of the term to establish a less certain but more encompassing meaning of “resilience”. For although something must appear unchanged to convey the trait, the resilient thing is always irreversibly altered. In architecture, this alteration and process of transformation need not be a visible material change (although it might be), but can also be brought about by a shift in ideological circumstances, our relationship with the way we remember, the mechanisms we use to resist the oppression and our relationship with the “other”.
Kuma International Architecture Month is generously supported by our donors and partners Open Society Fund BiH, VII Academy, Italian Embassy in BiH, Association of Architects BiH, International Burch University, Buybook and Ideologija.
PROGRAM
Week 1 – Building Resilience under Destruction
Armina Pilav (University of Sheffield)
Tuesday, October 6 at 19:00 CEST
“Transitional archives of war: survival and resilience in Sarajevo 1992-1996”
Paul Lowe (University of the Arts London)
Thursday, October 8 at 19:00 CEST
“City Under Siege: Behind the Camera”
Week 2 – Memory and Resilience
Ena Kukić (Graz University of Technology)
Tuesday, October 13 at 19:00 CEST
“Spatializing conflicted memories: the role of memorial architecture in social resilience”
Sabina Tanović (Delf University of Technology)
Thursday, October 15 at 19:00 CEST
Architecture and the Siege: Experienced, Preserved and Remembered
Week 3 – Resilience as Culture
Azra Akšamija (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Tuesday, October 20 at 19:00 CEST
“Cultureshutdown: Lobbying for Shared Heritage”
Amra Hadžimuhamedović (Center for Cultural Heritage, IFB)
Thursday, October 22 at 19:00 CEST
“Building resilience through rebuilding heritage: coping with war-trauma in Bosnia”
Week 4 – Divisions and Resilience
Igor Kuvač (Istraživački centar za prostor / University of Banja Luka)
Tuesday, October 27 at 19:00 CET
“The story of two cities, part 1 – Development of East Sarajevo”
Nasiha Pozder (University of Sarajevo)
Thursday, October 29 at 19:00 CET
“The story of two cities, part 2 – Extension to how spatial transformations become complicit in the struggle for reconfiguration of the city’s territory, boundaries and place identity”