Resilient Futures

From Besieged Sarajevo to Europe 2050

Studio tutor: Lucy Dinnen

● ●

● ●

This Studio comes at a pressing time of political instability in Europe. We face a multitude of planetary crises from which we are approaching a ‘point of no return’.

The War in Ukraine is a reminder that in a continent with over 40 separatist movements, we cannot take Peace for granted. Architects must learn to operate with urgency and appropriate the ‘State of Emergency’ as the rule, and not the exception.

Sarajevo is our starting point; learning from the extraordinary civilian-lead resistance during The Siege (1992-1996).  We will investigate how ordinary civilians and architects overcame scarcity by inventing and up-cycling resourceful, transient, covert and often surreal tools, architectural interventions and urban infrastructures for survival.  

We will explore Sarajevo’s periphery; the vast mountains and forests, derelict industrial sites from the Yugoslav period, unregulated settlements and inter-entity borders. 

You will take part in a 2-Week workshop on site, working in a fast paced urban environment to research, design, test, and prototype ‘resilient devices’ - small-scale spatial and architectural interventions that tackle current and near-future crises facing the city. These include: the climate emergency, climate migration, air pollution, water supply, political corruption, energy supply and the rise of popular nationalism.  

You will be joined by students from Europe and Bosnia and our Studio friends and teachers from the Global Free Unit.  These prototypes will be installed around the city and form the basis of design manifestos for larger architectural projects in Sarajevo or sites of your own choice.

You will learn experimental mapping, drawing and modelling techniques, and from our scenario drawing game methodology; to investigate, provoke, create and imagine architectures of resilience against the local and global crises facing Sarajevo today, as well as predicting future crises and trends.

Collectively, the Studio is an ’Exquisite Corpse’ of possible resilient futures.