What remains is what moves

What Remains is What Moves explores how knowledge from fieldwork and human interaction can be translated into spatial conditions. The project unfolds through five interconnected spatial parts.

LAYERING / DISRUPTION / CONTINUITY

The project is situated in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina - a relatively small city defined by distinct historical, social, and architectural layers. Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian structures coexist with recent interventions, while the wars of the 1990s introduced a new and painful typology: the ruin.

After three fieldwork visits, the project explores how these ruins can be understood beyond nostalgia or romanticisation. Instead, it investigates how traces of history can remain visible while becoming part of the city’s ongoing everyday life.

Mostar 

MAPPING / DREAMING / VIEWING

The project is rooted in extensive fieldwork and three workshops with students in Mostar.
Through mapping the city, imagining ideal forms of living, and reflecting on views and landscapes, the workshops revealed how students navigate, inhabit, and envision the city. Their perspectives became a key driver of the project, informing both its social spaces and its relationship to the surrounding mountains.

MONUMENT / INTEGRATE /REINTERPRET

Historic monuments, post-war reconstruction, vernacular buildings, and contemporary interventions create a complex dialogue across time in Mostar.
The project investigates how a new architectural intervention can engage with these existing layers. Rather than preserving the ruin as a static artifact, it explores how monumenting, integrating, and reinterpreting can activate the site and generate new relationships between past and present.

The proposal has organically grown from workshops, interviews, and fieldwork carried out over the past year. It is an exploration of how lived experiences, local knowledge, and everyday practices can be translated into spatial interventions.

Rather than a single architectural gesture, the proposal unfolds through five interconnected parts: The Base, The In-Between, The One's Own, The Tower, and The Encounter. Together, they form a framework for everyday life within the ruin.

ADAPTATION / LIMITATION / POTENTIAL

The project is shaped by the people of the city, requiring a response to diverse human needs.
While inclusive design is not currently a financial priority for the city and the school, the project explores how the building can be prepared for future change. Through small, strategic adjustments, it allows for increased inclusivity when resources become available.

It acknowledges present limitations while maintaining a forward-looking perspective, positioning the building as a flexible framework for future adaptation.