Mountainscapes

Abstract

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.