Dreams, Power and Indifference

Abstract

Architecture plays a complex role in the history of Kosovo. On the surface, the Kosovar attitude appears not to value architecture for anything other than what it visibly represents. Yet, on a deeper level, this attitude reveals a lack of awareness that society now can and should take responsibility for its urban environment. It is this absence of agency that condones extensive littering and the almost absolute obliteration of the remaining historic urban fabric for parking lots and generic contemporary housing. This attitude can be ascribed to the fact that architecture was central to the conflict fought in the Kosovo war, as a marker and legitimization of a fabricated ethnic identity, but more significantly it reaches back to the communist era and to the time when Kosovo’s public realm was passed from one totalitarian regime to another. The question thus becomes; how can architecture unwind this historical way of dealing with public space and through citizen engagement bring forward a discourse on agency and belonging in one’s urban environment. What role can the architect play here? How can he or she justify his or her presence? And what is the best approach? As Kosovo’s large population of young people begin to see public space in a new light, public attitudes that once deemed common spaces as the responsibility of the government are fading away. So, harnessing this opening and through engaging these new young communities, how can architecture become a socially constructive force through the processes around its formation, expression, and use?