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Within Prishtina Warchitectures

During the 1990s, the spaces in our homes in Kosovo were used in radically different ways than they had been traditionally. For over a decade, as the Serbian regime enforced increasingly more oppressive laws, Kosovars found remarkable ways to carry on with their lives in hiding and through improvisation. This project tells everyday stories of Prishtina, unveiling collective memories of people hidden behind the unseeming facades of residential houses.
In fifteen architectural narratives, we guide you through the cycle of the lives of those who inhabited these spaces.
Our tour includes residential houses transformed into maternity wards where Kosovar mothers could give birth, places where children grew up, residential houses adapted into schools, where youngsters went out, made craft and played sports, basements transformed into secret art galleries, working places, buildings constructed to suffocate, freeze and torture its captives through its structure and practices, spaces which witnessed extreme experiences of mass migration, as well as places who were witness of loss, pain and traumas during the war in 1999.
For the last two years, our collective ecocietystudies have been tracing the meaning of 15 buildings, looking into the wounds and traumas they still carry with them, and imagining the ways that these spaces may be repurposed in hopes of paving the way for healing in the future. Soon, the first book of its kind will be published and will be available for everyone interested.
`Within Prishtina Warchitectures` is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports!