Louisiana, USA, operates as an oilscape, sacrificing its landscape in pursuit of economic prosperity through the oil and gas industry. Combined with sea level rise, this has resulted in continuous land loss since the fifties, making the Louisiana coast one of the fastest declining in the world. As a consequence, many communities are living on the frontline of an ever shifting landscape that is disappearing. This research examines the nature of this erasure, the counter-mechanisms of resistance fostered within these communities and ultimately proposes how the notion of space can contribute. As a site of investigation Isle de Jean Charles was chosen, a small Native American community faced with the disappearance of their island. Using the method of Forensic Architecture, through fieldwork, interviews, and workshops, an evidence file was created, assembling the narrative of Isle de Jean Charles as an incident, from which to understand the larger narrative. The project reads the evidence through the notion of value, space, time, erasure, and resistance. There is a large discrepancy in what is considered valuable: on the one had there are the industries and the state continuously choosing economic gain over the preservation of the environment, whereas on the other hand, the land is considered priceless to those who occupy it. This last story which values the environment and these small communities is largely overshadowed, unheard, and pushed aside. However, these communities do resist and are employing many tools of resistance to negate the ‘violence of erasure’ fighting for preservation of their land, their identity, and the environment as a whole. This project translates these tools into design tools, to formulate a spatial component to aid this resistance. This spatial component is the building of a line that follows the shape of the current coastline. This line makes visible the changing conditions and erasure of its surroundings, protects the land behind it, and hosts different functions to invite people to the frontline, thereby operating as counter narrative, host, and landscape. Through its modular nature it can multiply to different communities facing with land loss, to collectively tell the story of living on the frontline of climate change. When necessary it can be activated, to reach the larger audience and rewrite what is considered valuable.

Since the disturbance of the civil wars from 1991-1996 a multiplicity of ruined, abandoned and contested landscapes can be found in the city of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Defining those spaces today implies not only thinking of the violent circumstances that shaped them, but also of the slow but persistent transformation caused by neglect since then. Abandonment of these spaces to the process of ruination and decay that has led to the return of non-human actors shaping them. This layering and entanglement of human and non-human actors, species and processes has resulted in the flourishing of new, unplanned and ephemeral ecosystems. This project looks at the ruin of the former University Library, with its new collection of ruderal plant life, it’s heritage value and its role in the city. The project aims to find new ways to negotiate the space for both man and nature to come together through a co-cultivation of the ruined landscape.

This graduation thesis aims to reactivate an old axis connecting two different parts of the city of Mostar. The choice of this particular corridor has been adopted not just because of its strategic location - it crosses the city from East to West, two sides that have been rebuilt after the Bosnian war without a coherent urban strategy - but also because every street, square, park and building along it belong to a common heritage, which after the Bosnian war is lost. Therefore, this axis ( I will name it Axis Rondo-Old HIT Square-Musala Square, due to the main squares that it crosses) is ideal for a design strategy, which will have a dual nature: renewing three degraded areas facing the axis and, at the same time, introducing into those spaces one of the most important, natural and partially forgotten heritage: the Neretva River. The use of a natural, dynamic and “memory keeper” element – the river - to connect those three spaces, in particular two squares and one ruin of a terrace garden, could represent the link missing in the Axis and create a new social use, enhancing a sense of responsibility for a common heritage that nowadays is mainly used as a public dump.

This body of research attempts to investigate the role of shopping typologies and their reciprocal relation with (ex-) Yugoslav Croatia, through (three) exemplary cases (the neighborhood department store, the city department store and the shopping center) by looking at three themes such as: their creation of centrality, the continuation of the public and the composition of program. The three main cases are Nama Trnsko, robna kuca RI, and Koteks and Gripe sports- and shopping center. It describes how the various types of shopping-buildings had either an installing or introductory role for the public/city/neighborhood around them; and/or an enhancing or supporting role, enhancing existing movement/centrality within the center/public. The main discussed themes in existing discourse (within as well as outside of HR) are housing and education, but ideologically the shopping typologies functioned as another trajectory towards modernity. On the architectural level, the types adopted certain ‘traditional’ or typical department store elements, such as the arcade and open plan. Increasingly implementing regional elements. On an urban scale, it would (literally) take the center position in new neighborhoods but (sometimes simultaneously) enhancing circulation flows in the area is not uncommon, as well as offering a mixed program that goes beyond shopping alone. As a final evaluation, the research shows the typologies have certainly evolved since then. The public character or role of the typologies has partially evaporated, and as urban entities they have become (partially) isolated. Often, what was once a single department store, has now split up into several smaller shops within the original building or have gone (partially) out of use. The shift from socialist to neo-liberal economy (accompanied by a violent transition) has altered the role of the typologies. The question arises, did the typologies as a trajectory to emancipation succeed? Have the fantastic visions of modernist architects and urbanists given society the physical structure to emancipation?

We are nowadays constantly being confronted with images of conflicts. It is a reality that seems far away from us, until we are not called to confront it closely. Throughout this research, I questioned the role of landscape architects in post-war cities and how we can intervene in a scarred territory. Enhancing the survival landscape investigates the Siege of Mostar (1993-1994) from a morphological point of view. Since the beginning, I questioned the way the conflict has played out through the space, the reactions of citizens to reorganise and reshape the city in order to respond to the basic need of survival. All of this resulted in the creation of spaces of resilience, the starting point of this research. Structuring and visualising these notions, and developing a coherent project that deals with the survival landscape defined by citizens between 1993-1994 are the aim of my graduation research. The project explores urban and landscape transformations, looking at the transitional spaces between military violent destruction and the spatial reactions of the inhabitants.

Mostar contains a multiplicity of ruined, abandoned and contested spaces, a consequence of the war in which it was involved between 1992 and 1996. But to define those spaces today we cannot think only of the violent changes that originated them. The fact that war ruins remained long after the end of the armed conflict, becoming blank spots in the city, allowed them to slowly transform into something else. The abandonment of those structures enabled the processes of ruination and decay to progress, making them less appealing to humans and giving space for non-human actors to start reclaiming portions of the city. Today, new and renovated buildings stand between neglected ruins and stalled constructions, many of them overgrown by spontaneous vegetation. Plants have taken over the leftovers of war, shaping a new kind of space that is neither completely urban nor wild: the urban wilderness. And if we look even closer into this combination of apparently dissimilar conditions, we will find a kind of coexistence that goes beyond the sharing of spaces in the city. What was once an area of general destruction is now covered by plants growing directly from war debris and contaminated soils. With time, man-made and plants have further entangled, forming hybrids where matter and life intersect and support each other, turning ruined areas into the perfect ground for new interactions between humans and non-humans.

Storyscape Neretva is an attempt to develop design strategies and apply them in the context of the post-war city of Mostar, BiH. Interweaving soft aspects of experience, narratives and memories together with hard facts of environmental neglect and degradation resulted in design strategies of spatial and temporal liminality and local material and actors. With these in mind small scale interventions engage with a local issue but are interconnected in a growing network that might be able to adress the issueas at large

The body is an unfolding archive, containing material layers, fossilized remnants of past memories, skin lesions of still visible trauma. The body is a daily carrying agent of intersections, between the outside-inside and inside-inside, in which there is a radicality in considering the ongoing daily or domestic for the institutional. The archive could be an unfolding institution, where fluid embodiments are archived, bodies collide onto Others, objects transfer knowledge, and events are mapped. The body and the archive are both subject to time; time as carrier of events, time as agent in the impermanence or transience of material, narrative, and memory. Time as challenger of the techniques and stability of knowledge. Transitioning the fossilized narratives in trauma is to disrupt the notion of archiving, through movement in its collection, transferring the knowledge from the fixed object.

Scattering and mixing their roles, tools, space and knowledge, letting them interact with the environment, and translating it into a spatial intervention. This graduation project is about merging together two of my interests and passions and making an architectural project out of it. But also much more than that. Being involved in Theatre and Architecture as two distinct fields has led me to the point I wanted to merge the them to allow the possibility of fueling each other from different backgrounds and points of view.

When planning a new intervention in the city with a complex and sometimes violent past, such as Sarajevo, the aspect of time is particularly important. The blooming of a landscape has not the same speed of the fast-changing urban conditions. There is an absence of synchronization. Agriculture and agricultural practices help shortening this gap, giving immediate meaning to these spaces, and offering a glimpse on the time passing. The goal is to make the space useful and meaningful, with the resources already present and very few time. Students and people from the neighborhood can engage with the soil from the first moment, work with it, try new techniques and learn from it. The area becomes a symbol for experimentation. The city is given an enclave, a cultural reservoir where experiments become useful not only to the students (in this case) but to the community in general. The spaces for agriculture are alternated to open lawns and public areas where inhabitants can spend time. In this way, experimentation is showcased to people and is likely to spread and rise interest. The site is, therefore, an open laboratory, immediately readable and comprehensible to all. The urban field is now a privileged area for diverse research in a public manner. This originates a new type of evocative space, an intermediate landscape between agriculture and public space, that may sparkle playful social practices, shared between different groups. The main goal underlying this type of space is firstly aesthetic but also scientific. Meanwhile, the surrounding area is planted with a growing forest resulting into a large intervention of reforestation. The produced urban space, this micro forest for agricultural experimentations set himself in a new relationship with nature. On one hand, we are in front of a process of re-appropriation by nature of the human space, on the other hand, man is engaging with the soil to benefit from it. Nor man, nor nature is now prevailing but we find ourselves in front of a process of action and reaction. The man observes and allows nature to develop and reacts to it only when its own survival sphere is touched. The site becomes now a metaphor for a laboratory dedicated to the relationship between man and its territory, in order to research how to reach a situation of balance.

The context in which (landscape) architects and urban designers work today poses new challenges for which conventional planning and design tools seem to be unfit. We have to recognise that every place is a complex and layered phenomenon, a physical platform of lived space. Complex locations like Sarajevo and its mountain, its bobsleigh track, with a particular geological, political, social and cultural history, demand analysis and design approaches that take into account the experience on the ground, the lived space, the different layers and meanings of a site, the experience of movement and time. Furthermore, the central position of the designer in the transformation process needs to be questioned by demands for participation and even co-creation with the different urban actors, which require specific tools that take into account the multiple stories embodied in a place. Top-down design and planning has increasingly made way for a complex process that involves many actors, creating a need to redefine the question of what design is. Rather than a linear, rational character of traditional planning, a shift towards more open design approaches should be made, which take into account experiential responses to the sites at hand, and which allow more relational ways of doing. My aim is that through the cinematic narrative and the use of film as a method, I open up the possibilities for a new reading of the void, beyond the existing interpretation, a new understanding of the bobsleigh track as an open space. Open space as a space for opportunity, imagination, un-programmed and free for uses not yet conceived, accepting changes in the mode of life. The space is to be shaped by the users. Forms should emerge spontaneously as an effect of human activity and are not defined beforehand in its manifestation. Within this open construct, the bobsleigh track is accessible and interpretable in various ways, thus preserving the void. By showing a multiplicity of viewpoints the void is preserved, maintaining its temporary appro- priation by different users, and giving it a place in the larger urban landscape. The user has to reflect and engage in a personal dialogue with the urban landscape. This is not a pre-determined role, but an active and open-ended part. More than simply leading to a final representation, this could be used to develop an architectural strategy as a structure in which time has room to breathe, and to let aging, growth and even decay unfold.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country that has endured many wars, through many different rules. The Yugoslav wars from 1991-1996 still linger in Mostar today, as we find a ‘divided city’, which is mostly enforced through institutions that ethnically divide public buildings. At the same time, citizens find this unnecessary and consider Mostar as ‘one’, as they move all over the city. Fountains in public places, particularly the ones with drinking water, used to be a major inclusive quality as a common good that were able to be used by anyone. Currently these are left neglected from a lack of responsibility to take care of these. Using these places as a spatial method to analyze the city, their inclusive qualities are utilized into creating an inclusive place where people can encounter each other, exchange and share knowledge, collaborate and essentially can reclaim public space. 'Inclusive' in this project refers to accessibility and a sense of ownership, where people are able to add a piece of themselves in the program. An existing ruin that used to be a popular department store called Razvitak, resides between two popular streets and through that holds potential to connect a new inclusive place to an existing social tissue. Razvitak plays the role to be unlocked as a common resource, in order to counteract divisional narratives and reconnect the city socially(and aquatically). The project gives this ruin its third life as a social centre, where the inclusivity is shaped through an experience from public to private, encountering different intimacies along the way that shape diverse spaces of encounter, to which the programme relates, while making use of the structure’s existing qualities.

Through a masterplan of a design intervention, the proposal aims to expose, unearth and highlight the multi-layered histories of the site, and counteract the various techniques of obstruction of collective memory. By informing the collective memory these interventions will aim to disturb the current war/division driven narratives that dominate the city. The proposal will take advantage of the imminent redevelopment of the area to introduce an interim commemoration park to encourage public engagement with the site, while encouraging and facilitating a dialogue between the interested parties.

Conflict, when dislodged from its conventional understanding as a process and system of war and destruction exclusively, may be apprehended as an experimental method for analysis and synthesis, as a potent resource for pedagogy, for disruptive design and for the production of theory. In this sense, conflict produces more than the eradication of (the possibility of) life and its supporting structures: conflict produces transitional spaces at different scales, of differentiated material ecologies and site-specific meanings in relation to their global position. Conflicts are both locations and explanations of often ‘seductive’ images of destruction offered by popular (and other) media: ruined architectures, dead (or barely alive) bodies, forced migratory movements, impermanent infrastructures and settlements, as well as the tracing and construction of borders, real-estate driven post-war reconstruction processes, etc. The emphasis on the mediatic aspect in the concept of conflict, may be seen as a way of triggering trans- and interdisciplinary discussions, conversations and encounters that serve as a negotiation between conditions of violence and new — or alternative — possibilities for everyday life. Artistic mediations could be as effective as violence in resolving conflicts, but operate through other means and through other channels, thus truly producing new power relations and alternative ways of political struggle. This exposing of conflict and violence through the artistic work is an activist act, but more importantly an artistic and technological mediation. The agency of the artistic work in terms of conflict, then, is situated in the capacity of visualising the conflict, creating awareness of its consequences, its side-effects, its collateral damage. And the creating of awareness and the becoming of fertile ground for protest and the creation of alternative realities. At a three-day conference held at the TU Delft on November 6-8, 2019 researchers, scholars, activists, practitioners and artists presented individual papers that addressed the relationships between spatiality, mediation and conflict from a variety of perspectives. In addition to academic paper contributions, the conference welcomed other proposals in different formats and media: audio-visual material (film, video, photography), digital or physical archives, experimental design proposals, installations, performances, etc. The thematic core of the conference explored new — or innovative — theoretical and methodological approaches and insights on: (1) Spaces of conflict as transitional spaces of material interactions between violence and everyday life; and (2) Spaces of memory as transformative space of violence).@en

Conflict, when dislodged from its conventional understanding as a process and system of war and destruction exclusively, may be apprehended as an experimental method for analysis and synthesis, as a potent resource for pedagogy, for disruptive design and for the production of theory. In this sense, conflict produces more than the eradication of (the possibility of) life and its supporting structures: conflict produces transitional spaces at different scales, of differentiated material ecologies and site-specific meanings in relation to their global position. Conflicts are both locations and explanations of often ‘seductive’ images of destruction offered by popular (and other) media: ruined architectures, dead (or barely alive) bodies, forced migratory movements, impermanent infrastructures and settlements, as well as the tracing and construction of borders, real-estate driven post-war reconstruction processes, etc. The emphasis on the mediatic aspect in the concept of conflict, may be seen as a way of triggering trans- and interdisciplinary discussions, conversations and encounters that serve as a negotiation between conditions of violence and new — or alternative — possibilities for everyday life. Artistic mediations could be as effective as violence in resolving conflicts, but operate through other means and through other channels, thus truly producing new power relations and alternative ways of political struggle. This exposing of conflict and violence through the artistic work is an activist act, but more importantly an artistic and technological mediation. The agency of the artistic work in terms of conflict, then, is situated in the capacity of visualising the conflict, creating awareness of its consequences, its side-effects, its collateral damage. And the creating of awareness and the becoming of fertile ground for protest and the creation of alternative realities. At a three-day conference held at the TU Delft on November 6-8, 2019 researchers, scholars, activists, practitioners and artists presented individual papers that addressed the relationships between spatiality, mediation and conflict from a variety of perspectives. In addition to academic paper contributions, the conference welcomed other proposals in different formats and media: audio-visual material (film, video, photography), digital or physical archives, experimental design proposals, installations, performances, etc. The thematic core of the conference explored new — or innovative — theoretical and methodological approaches and insights on: (1) Spaces of conflict as transitional spaces of material interactions between violence and everyday life; and (2) Spaces of memory as transformative space of violence).@en

Conflict, when dislodged from its conventional understanding as a process and system of war and destruction exclusively, may be apprehended as an experimental method for analysis and synthesis, as a potent resource for pedagogy, for disruptive design and for the production of theory. In this sense, conflict produces more than the eradication of (the possibility of) life and its supporting structures: conflict produces transitional spaces at different scales, of differentiated material ecologies and site-specific meanings in relation to their global position. Conflicts are both locations and explanations of often ‘seductive’ images of destruction offered by popular (and other) media: ruined architectures, dead (or barely alive) bodies, forced migratory movements, impermanent infrastructures and settlements, as well as the tracing and construction of borders, real-estate driven post-war reconstruction processes, etc. The emphasis on the mediatic aspect in the concept of conflict, may be seen as a way of triggering trans- and interdisciplinary discussions, conversations and encounters that serve as a negotiation between conditions of violence and new — or alternative — possibilities for everyday life. Artistic mediations could be as effective as violence in resolving conflicts, but operate through other means and through other channels, thus truly producing new power relations and alternative ways of political struggle. This exposing of conflict and violence through the artistic work is an activist act, but more importantly an artistic and technological mediation. The agency of the artistic work in terms of conflict, then, is situated in the capacity of visualising the conflict, creating awareness of its consequences, its side-effects, its collateral damage. And the creating of awareness and the becoming of fertile ground for protest and the creation of alternative realities. At a three-day conference held at the TU Delft on November 6-8, 2019 researchers, scholars, activists, practitioners and artists presented individual papers that addressed the relationships between spatiality, mediation and conflict from a variety of perspectives. In addition to academic paper contributions, the conference welcomed other proposals in different formats and media: audio-visual material (film, video, photography), digital or physical archives, experimental design proposals, installations, performances, etc. The thematic core of the conference explored new — or innovative — theoretical and methodological approaches and insights on: (1) Spaces of conflict as transitional spaces of material interactions between violence and everyday life; and (2) Spaces of memory as transformative space of violence).@en

Divided cities are generally linked with civil wars in which group identity is threatened. This type of war dominated the late twentieth century, leaving many cities vulnerable. According to J. Calame and E. Chalesworth(2009) in Divided Cities: Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia, since World War II there has been a marked shift in global warfare trends from inter - to intrastate conflict: of 64 wars between 1945 and 1988, 59 were intrastate or “civil” wars, and about 80 percent of those who perished were killed by someone of their own nationality. Mostar can be added as one more case some years later. Because of the division these cities hypofunction spatially and socially. In the case of Mostar, Neretva River is used in the frame of the politics of division, providing mental and physical spaces of shame. More specifically, it forwards a surface common memory, as supposed effort of reconciliation of the past with scattered stones, calling them monuments, around the city, leaving the core of its identity, the river, as an abandoned area. In order for the city to start functioning social normally again, it’s necessary to be created a common space of history, which will produce common memories for the future generations. The thesis tries to give a new insight on how to deal with a landscape where ordinary pleasant memories replaced with memories of terror (Neretva), responding to the need of the city for a new memorial architecture. Even though, it addresses a specific area (Neretva), could be influence for many other cities which suffer from post-traumatic events, since it will propose a memorial, not as a spot but, as a system, taking into account the complexity of social, historical, religion, economical, morphological parameters. The new memorial scape in Mostar will not represent a reason for being sad but rather a way to look and hope for the future, becoming with the river a symbol of the city. It is designed as part of the history, being a powerful reminder of society and how citizens of Mostar should stand together in the face of the tragedy of the war. It redefines the relationships between the local community helping the future generations to understand a bit of their history as well. The memorial scape tries to become a part of the Mostar culture, being based on the powerful connection between man and nature. The idea is not only to create a space that stands as a symbol of memory but also to allow people the opportunity to relax and enjoy a new green space. It is just as important for the memorial scape to serve the collective memory as it was to have a high functionality level, providing residents of the area with a new space to enjoy the open outdoors.

The concept of war abolition introduced by Krzysztof Wodiczko has attracted the attention of different scholars, and generated various reactions. Despite the affirmation of anthropologists, such as Margaret Mead and Douglas P. Fry, the project has not met with widespread acclaim from other areas, and not for lack of discussion. There are many voices that recognise the essence of the subject, however a substantial response beyond experimenting on paper has yet to emerge. This thesis re-examines the original assumptions of the concept and raises the subject of architecture in relation to the concept of war abolition. Assuming that the fate of people is intertwined with wars it seems crucial to understand the mechanisms and the medium of warfare, as well as our inestimable role in it. Are there any lessons to be learned from the experience of war? If indeed there are some, how can this knowledge be used in order to better the cities and their reconstruction in times of peace? To address this hypothesis it is necessary to study the transformation of the city during the war and adaptation of its inhabitants. Due to the proximity in time and space to Bosnian War, Sarajevo is a perfect case study for this examination. This thesis investigates the untapped potential of architecture to become a platform for dissemination of the concept of war abolition and its application in Sarajevo.