In the Oscar-winning film No Man’s Land (2001), a Serbian and a Bosnian soldier are trapped between the frontlines of the opposing armies, in a trench positioned in no man’s land. Although awkward, the situation is not tragic until the two soldiers discover another Bosnian soldier, presumed dead but who then gains consciousness while lying on an unexploded mine. The slow progression of the film’s plot hints at a potential for development of an agonistic forum between the protagonists, which opens with the question ‘who started the war?’, asked by whichever soldier is in possession of a gun. While this discussion is acted out relying on humor, this scene in the movie is critical in terms of relativisation of history and clarity of historical facts – contrary to the cinematic storyline, there is no confusion about who started the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Further into the movie plot, United Nations (UN) peacekeeping units were forced into action by a journalist who suspected the UN’s indifference to act even in emergency situations. Similarly, Joe Sacco’s non-fiction graphic novel The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo (2003) opens up the complexity of ‘the great Siege of Sarajevo’ from within, as the narrative focuses on ‘war within the war’ wherein the main protagonists are local criminals profiting from war and dubious government decisions. Both examples end with a moot prospect for an agonistic space of living, either among the hostile ethnic parties or within the international community with its failure to successfully resolve the issue. [...]

After Nuremberg, there is probably no other place where the future of Europe has been so definitively tested and safeguarded as in The Hague. The iconic building of the former International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has become a global symbol of international law and transitional justice since its establishment in 1993. As the direct successor to the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg in 1945-1946, this UN tribunal concluded 25 years of unprecedented success in investigating and trying all major war crimes suspects from the wars in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. It also made history through the first application of the UN Genocide Convention in the trial of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. This report addresses the question of how the significance of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as a heritage and memorial site for its many (inter)national stakeholders, can be preserved following the withdrawal of the UN and a possible redevelopment of the site.

When the design competition for Germany’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (MMJE) was published in 1994, Sarajevo was under a brutal siege that lasted from April 1992 until February 1996. In December 1995, the war was officially over when the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed in Paris. Visiting in 1997 to pay a pre-Christmas visit to German troops in Sarajevo protecting a fragile newborn peace, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl–one of the key figures behind both the Dayton Peace Agreement and the process of creating the MMJE in Berlin–met Bosnia and Herzegovina’s three members of the collective presidency and instructed them to work with the world on cementing that peace. In a way, this is what Chancellor Kohl aimed to do with remembering the Holocaust in Germany with the MMJE. The lengthy and contested process of creating the MMJE started in the late1980s and developed parallel to the discussion about how to memorialize the existence of the Berlin Wall in the 1990s. Upon its inauguration in 2005, the MMJE became one of the most famous case studies for addressing multiple crises of the contemporary world and the rising interest among both scholars and the public in re-examining memorial architecture in terms of purpose and agency in the transmission of memory. The contested process of cementing the remembrance through memorial architecture, however, only demonstrated how very complicated official materializations of remembrance can be regardless of whether a society is dealing with the traumas and difficult heritage of historical or living memories, which is the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Importantly, the process of creating the MMJE also demonstrated that the designer is pivotal in the process of creating permanent memorial architecture that translates collective sentiment into a built space.

The publication presents a comprehensive overview of the vast production of monuments in socialist Yugoslavia (1945–91) dedicated to the antifascist People’s Liberation Struggle in the Second World War and the socialist revolution. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, these monuments have been subject to various fates, from neglect and physical destruction to global fame generated by the high-modernist visual appeal of a number of them. But the full scope, wide-ranging diversity, and complex context of Yugoslav monument making, including its various contradictions, have remained largely unexplored. The book offers a thorough and interdisciplinary exploration of this phenomenon and a rich visual material to examine its key characteristics and specificities: What memorial practices and commemorative traditions preceded the development of monument-making in socialism? Who commissioned these monuments and how did Yugoslav cultural and memory politics influence their production? Who were their authors and what defined their formal and typological features? How was Yugoslav monument production related to comparative efforts abroad? What commemorative practices developed around monuments? How is this legacy evaluated and received today, both in the post-Yugoslav successor states and internationally?

The Siege of Sarajevo (1992-95) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, transformed the city into a landscape of ruins. One site of destruction was the Oslobođenje building, where Sarajevo’s daily newspaper was produced. Even though it was one of the first buildings shelled, it continued to be used during the siege as the newspaper was published daily from the basement that was still accessible. The destruction was documented by Sarajevo’s architects in a war-time project entitled “Warchitecture” (1993). In 1998, there was a decree by which the building was to be preserved as a ruin to commemorate the urbicid and the resilience of people in the face of destruction. This, however, was never followed through and the ruin of the Oslobođenje building was eventually demolished. The Augmented Sarajevo initiative aims to use available technologies to digitally reconstruct destroyed built environment and make it available on site as a mobile technology application. In a bottom-up approach, this citizens’ initiative includes both expert and lay perspectives on war heritage and its role in the remembrance of the siege. Due to its symbolic value, the Oslobođenje building is selected as a first case-study where we plan to create an augmented filter to reenact the sense of place through digital reconstruction, personal memory recordings and historic research. This paper will discuss the significance of the built environment during the siege and today - three decades after – to argue that technology has a great potential to reinforce collective remembrance discourses. After analysing problems with current approaches to war-damage reconstruction of heritage, the chapter will focus on the inception of the Augmented Sarajevo initiative that aims to document intersections of personal memory and existing collective framings of memory to provide space for this relationship to develop.

The article aims to problematize the notion of contemporary sacred by looking into some of the relevant issues regarding contemporary memorial architecture dedicated to remembering atrocities. The text contextualizes memorial architecture as a relatively recent genre that originated in response to the carnage of the two world wars to stress that the modality of the form is dependent on given socio-cultural and political contexts. In arguing that agency of both designer and the design are essential in the conception of today’s spaces of remembrance, the author discusses appropriation as a process that renders memorial architecture meaningful. The argumentation is supported by a number of examples such as 11M memorial in Madrid and the Namenmonument in Amsterdam that demonstrate a variety of approaches and their consequences for the notion of sacred as a consensus between different stakeholders.

This innovative study of memorial architecture investigates how design can translate memories of human loss into tangible structures, creating spaces for remembering. Using approaches from history, psychology, anthropology and sociology, Sabina Tanović explores purposes behind creating contemporary memorials in a given location, their translation into architectural concepts, their materialisation in the face of social and political challenges, and their influence on the transmission of memory. Covering the period from the First World War to the present, she looks at memorials such as the Holocaust museums in Mechelen and Drancy, as well as memorials for the victims of terrorist attacks, to unravel the private and public role of memorial architecture and the possibilities of architecture as a form of agency in remembering and dealing with a difficult past. The result is a distinctive contribution to the literature on history and memory, and on architecture as a link to the past.

This paper will focus on the Tunnel D-B in Sarajevo (aka Tunnel of Hope) –a rare example of war heritage that commemorates both human resilience and traumatic past. It has been 25years since its construction under gruesome circumstances during the siege of Sarajevo(1992 –1995). Today, decisions need to be made to preserve this unique heritage and continue the work of remembrance. A complex design project involving a memorial museum and an educational center is underway. This raises pertinent questions that are touching upon the very purpose of its existence and are, in fact, common to most sites commemorating difficult and traumatic histories. To address relevant topics, the paper discusses a) the notion of memorial architecture and current day design practices and approaches in commemorative projects on authentic sites, b) zooms into the specific context of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Tunnel D-B and, finally, c) explains the concept design that is planned for the site of the Tunnel D-B.

This visual essay investigates the Steilneset Memorial (2011) in Vardø, Norway—a collaborative effort between the artist Louise Bourgeois and the architect Peter Zumthor. Consisting of two separate buildings, often referred to as a “line and a dot,” the project aims to narrate a centuries-old tragic history of witchcraft. The memorial was imagined as a commemorative project that responds to the spatial and cultural context of the location while also evoking the traumatic legacy. To address the centuries-old harrowing episode, the designers explored a concept of spirituality as a way to transcend historical time.

The architecture of memorial spaces inevitably operates with an aspect of durability. Historical memorial sites and memorials, for instance sites commemorating the two world wars, face this issue with a sense of urgency. When memorial sites succumb to time, questions arise about how to enhance the sense of place and help visitors trace the historical narrative. Many would argue that the natural ageing of memory sites is the most reliable in the process of remembering. Indeed, numerous contemporary designs, including cemeteries, are constructed in a way that integrates nature as a design element. In this approach, the visible ageing of physical space relies on the psychological concept of ‘healing’, as established in western societies. Conversely, the history of monument and memorial building is abundant with examples that aim to conquer time. A problem arises when projects designed to do precisely this, due to their technological shortcomings or a variety of other reasons, succumb to time nonetheless and therefore come in disunity with a given context. This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the spatial strategies applied in places of traumatic heritage, and to reflect on their implications for the transmission of historical remembrance. In a comparative analysis several case studies will be examined, namely the Westerbork memorial site in the Netherlands, the “Ring of Memory” memorial in France and the “11M” memorial in Spain.

How do we commemorate recent atrocities? In most cases, in the aftermath of tragic events, public mourning takes place - usually displayed through numerous objects left at the spot. If the event is considered to be of national interest, it is most likely that official plans for building a permanent memorial will take place. Since temporary memorials or so-called grassroots memorials are perceived as a form of democracy in action, they raise a range of critical questions for those commissioning and building permanent official markers for places of tragedy. One premise is that contemporary memorials, among other tasks, offer a space where individuals can make sense of loss and deal with conflicting emotions. In reality, however, most memorials fail to perform this function since the needs of the public collide with their architectural solutions. Through a brief investigation of several contemporary memorials, this paper aims to highlight approaches commissioners and designers adopt in regard to public sentiments and the process of transformation from spontaneous mourning to the built structure.

Contemporary Western society often strives to confront and cope with loss through projects that commemorate various events, both long past and recent. This is particularly true in cases of the trauma-laden remembrance of modern atrocities. Memorials are perceived as spaces that can provide necessary healing environments for the victims and their relatives, but are also planned to encourage remembrance by future generations. After the Second World War, designers faced with representing the Holocaust delivered radical approaches to spaces of memory, in many cases promoting oblivion or questioning the motives of memorializing in the first place. Contemporary memorials often address the representation of difficult memory with spaces of absence as the most tangible answer to loss and trauma. To understand this approach, this article investigates several memorial spaces responding to recent traumatic events, such as the Atocha 11M Memorial in Madrid, designs for planned memorials in Oslo and Utøya, the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.