Buildings as Living Archives: B(ordering), othering and self-appropriation. The case of mass housing in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina
28 outubro 2020 | 13h30-14h30 | Online

 

Link ZOOM:

https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/87320616101

ID da reunião: 873 2061 6101

 

 

Buildings as Living Archives: B(ordering), othering and self-appropriation.

The case of mass housing in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina

 

 

Sonja Lakić

Visiting researcher CIES-Iscte

 


 

"If walls could talk, what could we hear? This workshop is a retrospective journey through the residential landscapes of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and an exploration of different stages of a lifecycle of local mass housing. Here, we discuss the walls that surround us as an embodiment of practices of (b)ordering, othering, and, finally, appropriation of space, shedding a light on how dwelling experience and life itself unfolded under the flag of the Yugoslav ideology of Brotherhood and Unity and mostly uniform built environment, as well as what nowadays, in the contemporary cultural era that preaches individualism, remains. Through intimate portrayals of individual dwelling and residing histories, the workshop depicts then and now and, for the first time ever, brings to light one of the darkest periods of the local history – e.g. the 1993 amendments to the Law on Housing Relations and the newly introduced policy of rationalization - that malformed the mass housing through violent evictions and marked quite a perplexing ethno nationalist regime-initiated era of the rewriting of the local urban and cultural identity, by eliminating the different and the other by replacing them with those of a better fit and as ethnically clean as possible. Walls talk and we are here to listen."

 

 

--

 

Sonja Lakić is an internationally trained architect, urbanist, curator and researcher, currently appointed as a visiting researcher at CIES-IUL, ISCTE in Lisbon. Sonja holds advanced Master of Science in Urbanism and Strategic Planning degree, obtained from University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, and a PhD in Urban Studies, obtained from double-degree program at Gran Sasso Science Institite, L’Aquila, Italy and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy. Sonja practices an urban ethnography in a rather unconventional way, nurturing an interest in lived forms of buildings, anthropological and sociological aspects of architectural design and the built environment, with her work evolving around open architecture and dialectical urbanism. Topics of her curiosity include the everydayness of architecture, notion of home(making), housing and informality, buildings as living archives, post-conflict societies, affective urbanism and architecture and happiness. Sonja operates across different disciplines and scales, works visually, and collects oral histories and does storytelling through photography, as well as filmmaking.

 


 

Download do cartaz em PDF