Amir PASIC
MOSTAR IN BOSNIA AND HERCEGOVINA

Mostar, and its historical section, the Old Town, is used as a case study for the rebuilding of the cultural heritage of Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Bosnia and Herceciovina is in the heart of Europe. It has shared a similar history with Mediterranean European countries. Illyrian rule was replaced by Roman rule in the 3rd century B.C. and finally, a process of symbiosis was completed by the Roman-Slavic entity in the 7th century AD.
There, on the Neretva river, the Roman Empire was split into Eastern and Western Empires. Five centuries later, in the 11th century, Christianity was divided into Catholic and Eastern Orthodox sects. From the 17th century, the Neretva river was the west border of Islam.
Since the 12th century, Bosnia was an independent country with a Slavic population. From the middle of the 15th until the end of the 19th century, Bosnia and Hercegovina was a part of the Ottoman State.
Slavic tribal communities gradually underwent a transformation which led to the later feudal system. Since the 12th century, Bosnia was an independent country. Slays in Bosnia were not unified from the religious point of view: the so-called Bosnian or Bogumil Church, based on religious heresy and derived from Christianity, was dominant. There was also a sizable Catholic Church settled in Central Bosnia and a small group of Orthodox along the eastern Bosnian border.
For a long time prior to the arrival of the Ottomans, Bosnia was a meeting place of different, indeed, at times mutually opposed cultural elements: Greek and Latin alphabets, Byzantine and preRomanesque artistic traditions, Romanesque and Gothic styles, the Orthodox-Christian faith and Catholicism. Creative interrelation of all these elements, which took place during the several centuries of the independent Bosnian state, gave rise to a series of valuable cultural assets for which Bosnia came to be known well beyond its borders: in religion, it was the Bosnian Bogumil Church, the tombstones; in the domain of literature, it was Bosnian Cyrillic and Glagolithic scripts; in graphic arts, it was the uniquely Bosnian book illuminations.
From the ethnic point of view, the Bosnians are Slays who live in Bosnia and speak the Bosnian language. The majority of people living in Bosnia and Hercegovina, by their origin, upbringing and education, relate to Islamic culture and civilization--mirrored not so much through religious manifestations as through a complex spiritual physiognomy. Because of the large number of Muslims in Bosnia and Hercegovina, this physiognomy has also affected the non-Muslim inhabitants and the environment of Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Architecture is symbol of a tolerance. During the Ottoman rule in Bosnia (1463-1878), under these social conditions, a specific Islamic Ottoman Bosnian culture, which has been preserved till today, was developed especially through Architecture. Architectural heritage gives us clear images of tolerance in Bosnia.
A small group of architectural creations with monumental characteristics was built following a pattern that developed and was standardized in Istanbul and several other centers. A much larger group, consisting of the shops in the bazaars, the mosques in the mahalas and the private houses, while sharing basic features of Islamic Architecture, manifested marked regional characteristics produced by specific environmental and cultural factors.
Architecture is the best witness of the common life of Muslims, Christians, and Jews: mosques, churches, and synagogues existed side by side signifying that in Bosnia, Catholic Croatians with their Western European culture, Eastern Orthodox Serbs with their elements of Byzantine culture and Sephardic Jews continued to live together with Bosniak Muslims for more than four centuries.
Mostar is an administrative, economic and cultural center of the south region of Hercegovina. The region had about 350,000 inhabitants according to the last census. (April, 1991). The area of the municipality was inhabited by 130,000 people. The urban area, located in the central valley on the Neretva river had about 70,000 people at this time.
Mostar was established by the Ottomans in the second part of 15th century, around a strategic crossing over the Neretva river.
From 1474, when the settlement with the name of Mostar was first mentioned, throughout the several centuries of the Ottoman-Islamic presence, an Ottoman-Islamic urban milieu was formed, where the commercial and residential areas were kept strictly apart. The market (carsija), located at a river crossing, was a vital part of the city.
The market attracted craftsmen and merchants of every known kind. There were three squares and many small streets connecting them, with each street designated for a particular craft. Craftsmen were organized in associations (esnaf) much in the same way that they still are in certain European countries. Christians and Jews lived and worked in the bazaar together with Muslims and shared with them an almost identical life-style.
Housing areas, mahalas, 32 in total, were situated outside and around the bazaar, connected to it by a network (usually) of narrow streets. Mahalas were traditional neighborhoods found in all parts of the Ottoman State. They were residential areas with their own mosque, church or synagogue, shops, schools, and other facilities needed in daily life. Every mahale had its own communal spirit and mutual-aid system which contributed to the identity of each mahale and to a high degree of social cohesion. Every mahalla had its wealthy and poor inhabitants. In some, the wealthy prevailed over the poor, in others the poor may have outnumbered the better-off, but slum-like settlements were not known to exist. The poorer inhabitants were always under the patronage of the rich neighborhood families, so that extreme social differences were greatly neutralized.
It is very important to emphasize that there did not exist a religious or ethnic division in mahale organization.
The family was the basic social unit of the Islamic-Bosnian community; the family house was the basic structural cell of an urban settlement. Houses were self-contained and detached with a courtyard and the garden enclosed by a wall, particularly on the side facing the street.
The house was a dwelling complex composed of three parts: the house per se: the courtyard (avliya), with a kitchen, wood-shed, toilet, stable, pantry, drinking fountain, pergola, and often a flower garden; and a vegetable and fruit garden, with a lawn, a small pavilion, and, possibly, running water.
The main unifying feature of the various types of Ottoman houses in Bosnia and Hercegovina is in the basic layout of functional units: two or more multifunctional rooms on two floors, with flexible use--without heavy furniture and with limitations as to seasonal occupancy, around the common space, hail or hayat--one spatial entity, spread over two floors with a connecting staircase, placed by the wall opposite the open part of the hall.
The largest number of houses contain the same essential elements of composition, structure, and volume, with variables reflecting the social and economic levels of the house’s owners, and as realized by domestic masters and by local building and materials technology.
This architecture aimed to bring men into a harmonious relationship on all levels. First and most basic of levels was that of the room, which provided essential privacy. The second was that of the housing complex. The third was the area of the bazaar, and the last, fourth level was that of the city, with its numerous aspects and possibilities.
A specific regional architecture of Mostar and Hercegovina, was thus created, leaving behind a series of characteristic architectural achievements, mostly modest by physical dimensions but of considerable importance to the cultural history of its people.
Mostar after 1878. Austro-Hungarian troops occupied Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1878. With them came a change in economic and social activities.
Everything that has happened since was a result of the introduction of new capitalist relationships, while the confrontation of the two adverse civilizations enhanced this encounter. It is not political and religious antagonism that brought this up, but rather an entire perception of life, which, for the Bosnian population stemmed from the religion; the Bosnian cities were already undergoing changes from the transformation of pre-industrial to industrial society. The Islamic religious perception of the time (that defines the system of life and its values) found it hard to accept these principles of social order--a minor note explains that, prior to Austro-Hungarian occupation, the idea of a house for rent was an alien concept to the inhabitants of Sarajevo; even those that were poorest lived in a house of their own. This illustrates the scale of changes that would transform the future likeness of the city. The image of the Ottoman environment was changed, especially in the city centers of Sarajevo and Mostar.
In Mostar, a large number of new constructions took place, varying in character. The natural bulwark (hills around the city) was linked by a series of fortifications and connected to the city by new roads. Military camps, in the South, North and West, marked the boundaries of the city. The new
government saw the city’s past and present on the East bank and its future on the West bank.
Mostar was divided into eight zones, five on the East bank of the Neretva river (Carina, Luka, Brankovac, Bjelusine, The Old City), and three on the West bank. (Cernica, Prethumlje, Zahumlje).
The banks of the city were linked by three new bridges over the Neretva river: The Czar Franz Joseph Bridge along Musala (1882), Carinski along the North Military Barracks (1913), and the Mujaga Komadina bridge (1916), 200 meters far from the Old Bridge on the South.
A railroad and new roads connected the city with Sarajevo and the Adriatic coast.
A stronger concentration of capital ensured the faster growth of the city, similar to that growth initiated in the first half of the 16th century.
As a result of increased demand for housing space, a new dwelling type appeared--houses for rent--and a new business--real-estate speculation. Both activities had great impact upon the quality of housing and of urban space.
The changing character of housing business created a new class of real-estate owners. They were not only a new social category, as landlords, but also the most important capital owners and financiers.
Along with the reconstruction of the old city streets, new ones were constructed under the heavy influence of Western Europe. The aim was the establishment of a new transportation network (still in use today) on the West bank of the Neretva river, that would enable a continual economic growth.
The new railroad station was the most significant complex, and it became the point of origin for the new Mostar. Along the railroad station, new administrative, public and housing blocks were constructed. In 1885, Mostar had 1,975 houses, 2,114 apartments and 12,665 inhabitants.
Intensive growth posed new communal problems for the city’s government: the construction of new water pipes, modern city sewage, electrical power line/network, street illumination, and the construction of new roads.
Due to the increased demand for water in 1885, a new modern water supply was built from the Radobolja spring, with a big tank and 53 outlets. New water lines facilitated the development of a modern fire brigade. The city gained a new power plant in 1911 and street illumination in 1894, replacing the 330 lanterns used before.
The important event for the city’s growth and development was the government’s establishing of a cadastral and land office in 1891. These institutions are still in use today.
The new government kept the main street and located some new facilities there, as needed for that time. To the main street, whose basic line is older even than the city, was given a natural orientation, that is from South to North, parallel to the roads that connect the inland with the sea, along the riverbed of Neretva river. The urban milieu of this street was complete by the mid- 17th century.
Mosques, three in the Old Town, and 32 in the mahalas, two hamams, one caravanserai, a clock tower, eight medreses, the Old Bridge built in 1566, two small bridges on the Radobolja river, two water supply systems, two Orthodox churches, the Catholic church, several Christian schools, and approximately 1,909 houses constitute the building heritage in 1878, the last year of the Ottoman rule.
In the following four decades, with numerous interventions, the complete urban milieu was transformed. Interventions can be examined in five groups:
A. In Old Town area
On the Main street, the following buildings were built:
The military headquarters (today’s Municipality building), the municipality hall, an administrative building with school complex, a new religious school (Mekteb) with the reconstruction of Cejvan Cehaja mosque (1899), a variety of houses and business buildings, the English consulate, Luka school (1908), a tobacco factory (1880-1885), the Serbs’ primary school designed by Djordje Knezic in 1909, the Lands Bank designed by Franc Vancas in 1910;
Along the Sauerwald street, they built: the magistrate and police (the building across the street from the Roznamedjijina Mosque), the Wencel pharmacy, and the Ukraine cinema.
Along the Mejdan square: the Orient hotel, Officer’s casino, the County Officer’s building. At that time, the hamam next to the Sinan Pasa Mosque was eradicated (1884).
B. The Musala square was organized as a new central city square, with several new structures: the Neretva hotel (1892), the school (1880), the City Bath--Banla (1914), the Post-office building, the Fire Brigade headquarters (1901), and the Bristol hotel (1906) across the new bridge.
C. A new city center was organized along the railroad station with the Financial police building (with cafeteria on the first floor), the Wregg hotel, Gymnasium (first part in 1898, second part in 1902), the Jubilee elementary school (1905), The Courthouse and prison (1892), the apartment house of Adam Mikacic, the courthouse with Land office, The Ice factory (Ledara) in 1903, Municipal hospital (1889), and the School of Crafts.
D. Area with luxury houses--villas organized between the railroad and Rondo, amongst which, Zahumka and Neretvanka in Liska street, (1905), Fesner (1897) and three of Pesko’s houses (1900-1905) on the Rondo square and Komadina on Setaliste street, stand out.
E. Facilities for the Catholic community were added in Pothum in the vicinity of the St. Peter and Paul Church (1866): The Catholic school of Merciful Sisters (1872), Hrvoje Theater (1887), and the Franciscan monastery (1894).
Many drawings and designs, planned for construction by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, are kept until today. The most interesting one is the design for a new bridge, the one that would bridge the Mejdan Square with the right bank--over 20 m wide, with terraces and numerous stores. The idea occasionally resurfaces.
There is an interesting urban concept of a few public buildings and entities, the Catholic cathedral on Rondo square, State hospital, in place of today’s Hygienic Institute. The city map, with a guide from 1899, provides a variety of information on buildings’ locations within the city.
The importance of the right bank with the railroad station as a new center, has eased the pressure on the left bank and the Old town, thus resulting in the preservation of the area around the Old Bridge. With diminished interest, the number of interventions was reduced. The new government permitted even motor vehicle traffic across the Old Bridge. For traffic, the bridge deck was filled with gravel, thus elevating the street level so that it could be used from the main street. This compelled the shop owners to raise their shops’ entrance to a new level.
On the East bank, the town planner incorporated a rectangular street scheme in the originally organic mahale urban milieu, thus, aiming to solve traffic problems and to provide more room for new construction. Generally, the Old Town area began slowly to die off.
After World War I, Architecture in Bosnia and Hercegovina followed movements, mostly of West European provenance: Moderna, between two world wars, Social-Realism after WW II and under the influence of the Soviet Union, and the International Style in the Sixties, responsible for the large apartment buildings in the suburbs.
While familiarizing themselves with modern developments in architecture, Bosnian architects continued to cultivate the values of the Bosnian building tradition. All of these movements influenced in part the area of the Old town, which had been defined mainly in the 16th century.
In the last four decades before the current war, a great work was done on the preservation of all types of monuments, aiming to preserve the multicultural structures. Of all preservation and restoration activities undertaken in that period, however, the most important are the large-scale projects for the Bas-Carsija in Sarajevo, and the project for the Old Town in Mostar.
In Mostar, The Stari Grad Institute, established by the government in 1977, undertook to develop an integrated concept of urban preservation, trying to transform a passive office under municipality patronage into an active office with a market sense.
Toward this aim, experience from similar projects all over the world was collected, examined and tapped to create a plan for the restoration and revitalization of the Old Town in Mostar.
Collaboration with the Republic Institute in Sarajevo and the Regional Institute in Mostar were developed on a partnership basis, with very good results. In the first three years, a collaboration was developed with the Mediterranean Center for Building Heritage in Split and with the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sarajevo.
During the period of 1977-1992, the organization of preservation work was in permanent transformation, aiming to find the best solutions for the preservation of heritage for the people of Mostar.
Three main organization schemes are important:
The preservation policy took into account all issues related to urban planning, development, infrastructure, economic, and social factors.
After a period in which public opinion was mobilized in favor of the project (1 977-81), the condition of the structures to be preserved was examined, basic technical documentation was provided, and an evaluation of the actual steps to be taken in carrying out the project was made for a number of competing proposals.
As a result of conservationist efforts after WW II, the Stari Grad Institute prepared The Master plan for Reconstruction and Revitalization of the Old Town in Mostar, accepted by the town council in 1990. This Plan was an integral part of urban and regional planning processes. In the Master Plan, evaluation based on complete survey and analysis, international experience and republic legislation, formed the framework for intervention proposals.
More than 200 different interventions were undertaken as parallel activities.
Restoration began with the Old Bridge complex, because of its symbolic value for Mostar.
This was an appropriate beginning, satisfying the psychological need for permanence. The area covered by the process grew larger, from 0.1 sq. km., in 1979 to 2.8 sq. km. in 1985, and finally, to 4.7 sq. km. in 1 991. Programs, designs for different interventions, and the Master plan were integral parts of the Stari Grad activities.
The conservation project for the Old Town received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1986.
1. The self-financing component of the urban preservation in Mostar
Incomes from the area under restoration were reinvested into the area itself, under a public/private partnership. The basic resources were the communal taxes collected in the Old Town and the rental revenues of the business structures which were municipal properties.
The main property owners were: the government, through The Stari Grad Institute (from 1989, Prostor-Stani Grad); government companies; religious communities; private companies; and individuals.
Each newly restored square meter enlarged the rental base and generated an amount of reinvested money. This process provoked interest in all groups of owners, and opened different kinds of joint-investment projects. The balance of the rent had a very important role in controlling and stimulating the inherent dynamic of the place.
A combination of different coefficients, indicating the quality of the street zone, the position in the street, the relationship between structure and street, the value of the structure, and the purpose, gave the rental coefficient for the each room. In this way, it was possible to subsidize unprofitable uses which were still important to the entire project.
Thus, the amount of income rose from $50,000 US in 1978 to $2,000,000 US in 1989. During the same period, the rate of growth of income was preserved at the level of 60% per year, while the annual inflation rate increased from 60% to 300%.
In the Old Town, there were structures which had been constructed oven the past six centuries. Due to this fact, the value of the lots was often greaten than the value of the buildings. In such cases, the financial burden was distributed from one structure to the whole area, and the building owner could receive a real financial compensation for his property.
2. Balance between the mix of the people and uses of the space
Balance of uses in the Old Town is in direct relationship with the uses in the city. The Old Town continued to perform the main functions of the city center in the well preserved structures: a municipality hall, the main mosques and churches, the City theater, the Museum of Hercegovina region and the Symphonic Orchestra.
The Old Bridge complex and bazaar with more than two hundred different shops and more than fifty restaurants, and the hotel Ruza formed the commercial and touristic center of Mostar and the wider region, with more than half a million visitors per year.
Houses, public buildings, monuments and urban design are only part of the social and cultural organization of the society--a physical framework for social activities.
This is the cultural heritage we preserved for the citizens of Mostar.
The citizens of Mostar had a key role in the preservation process. They participated in the legal decision-making procedure for each program in the framework of the project, and also as owners and users of the structures in the area under the urban preservation process.
Different programs aimed to balance their movements in daily, weekly, and seasonal life.
The project emphasized communication between people through stimulating interchange and personal identification with the community, and motivated all levels of the society to participate in on to understand the preservation processes.
Mostar, the project tried to integrate the past with the collective contemporary consciousness, to keep a sense of continuity and permanence within a context of change.
This aspect was very much emphasized in Mostar and in Bosnia and Hercegovina, where several cultural concepts founded on the different religious and ideological bases coexisted in close contact or even intermingled.
3. The educational component was integrated into the Mostar project with goals to identify the essential features of the cultural heritage and to develop an applicable method for the preservation of building heritage. In the first stage, a survey of The Old Bridge zone with two hundred structures was taken during the student holidays campaign. In the second stage, the staff, together with young experts and students made a survey and designs for the entire Old Town and for other monumental structures within the territory of the Mostar municipality. As a result, 25 very useful final projects, 12 Master theses and four Ph.D. theses were produced at the universities concerning different aspects of the preservation process.
From 1988 till 1991, in collaboration with the Aga Khan’ Program for Islamic Architecture, four international summer workshops were organized as the preliminary phase of an international and multidisciplinary graduate program for historic preservation, scheduled to become operational in September 1996. 44 graduate students and 28 professors from 12 countries attended the program during the original four year period.
The general education level was developed through newspapers, TV and radio programs, public conferences and exhibitions as a permanent pressure on public opinion.
The idea of including cultural heritage courses in schools and kindergarten programs was, unfortunately, not realized.
The above-mentioned components explain the integrated method of preservation applied in Mostar in the period from 1978 till April 1992. Generally speaking, this methodology integrated social and physical preservation through five aspects:
economic, based on different economic aspects and social concerns;
conservationist, giving primacy to the quality, cane, and meaning of the physical heritage; political, comprising a conceptual view of the role of planning in political struggles;
cultural, providing preservation of the characteristics of historically existing populations and culture; and empirical planning, using social and attitude surveys to discover the wills of people.
In the period of 1988-1992, the methodology determined in Mostar was successfully extended to cover the whole urban area of Mostar, as well as several other towns (Bihac, Pljevlja and Pocitelj).
War in Bosnia and Hercegovina
The last several years in Bosnia and Hercegovina have been a time of killing, ethnic cleansing, and destruction.
Genocide on Untermenschen people--Bosniaks with Muslim faith, aimed to reach Lebensraum proportion for our own great nation, lead by psychopathic creators of the Big Lie, and resulting in more than 200,000 people killed, more than half a million wounded, and more than one million refugees.
The masters of destruction take pleasure in expounding their motives; their task makes them proud. City haters and city destroyers haunt our lives. One of the motivating forces behind the rise and fall of civilizations is the battle between city lovers and city haters, a battle waged in every nation and every culture. For the city destroyers, “urban” is synonymous with dignity, sophistication, the unity of thought and word, word and feeling, feeling and action, and it must be done away with altogether.
From whatever depths of misguided national spirit and on whatever morbid principles they base their approaches, their idea is to destroy anything that existed before them.
Sarajevo, Mostar, Foca, Banja Luka, Gorazde, Bihac, and many other cities, towns and settlements have consequently been flattened. More than two thousand structures with monumental characteristics, and every museum, library and archive were reduced to rubble.
Destruction in Bosnia and Hercegovina was culminated in Mostar when the Old Bridge was ‘killed’. The Stari Most (Old Bridge) was built in 1566 by Mimar Hayreddin.
The word mostar means bridge-keeper: between the life of the people of the city and the bridge there is an intimate, age-old link. Their destinies are so intermingled that they cannot be imagined or recounted separately.
The bridge that had seen so many wars and survived so many years, no longer exists. After thousands of shells from Serbian artillery beginning in April 1992, and then again from Croat attack beginning in May 1993, the crime was completed on November 9,1993: the Old Bridge in Mostar was finally brought down.
One of the building miracles of 16th century Europe, the crowning achievement of an extraordinarily creative era of Islamic culture, was gone. The Stari Most had contained the meaning and the spirit of all Bosnia and Hercegovina: the essence of the bridge was of meeting and joining together; the country, like the bridge, could be divided only by destroying it.
The Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic wrote in the Observer “I’ve heard that people in Mostar, even adults, cried when they saw that the bridge had fallen. I believe the reports, for I have seen people who are not from Mostar cry as well. An elderly journalist, a lawyer, a singer, who wept for the first time since the war started. Not so long ago, the newspapers published photos of a massacre in the Bosnian Muslim village of Stupni Dol. One picture showed a middle-aged women with a long, dark knife-cut along her throat. I don’t remember anyone crying over that photo or others like it. And I ask myself: Why I feel more pain looking at the image of the destroyed bridge than the image of the woman? Perhaps it is because I see my own mortality in the collapse of the bridge, not in the death of the woman. We expect people to die. We count on our own lives to end. The destruction of a monument to civilization is something else. The bridge, in all its beauty and grace, was built to outlive us; it was an attempt to grasp eternity. Because it was the product of both individual creativity and collective experience, it transcended our individual destiny. A dead woman is one of us--but the bridge is all of us forever.”
Bosnia and Three Europes
The first Europe, established with a center in Rome, lasted from the 1st to the 4th century A.D.
This Europe had elements of tolerance, and syncretism of civilizations as its cultural model: it was a place of life in diversity, and Bosnia was an integral part of it.
Between the fourth and the seventh centuries, inflamed by wars with the Barbars, Germans, Slays, Avers, and others, the Europe of tolerance and life in diversity disappeared.
The second Europe came into existence with the establishment of the Frankish Kingdom, that proclaimed itself a successor of the Roman Empire. Despite its significant historical role, it failed to revive the civilization of cultural tolerance. Instead, it constituted a model that suited Christianity--based on religious or cultural unitanism that did not tolerate any other cultural concept in Europe at that time. This idea was the basis of the Crusades and the historical extinction of the Jews and Muslims from Europe. The foundation of everything that would haunt Europe ever since--ethnic and religious autocracy and long-lasting ethnic and religious wars--is a product of this age.
Despite the exalted technological and scientific progress, the ideas of xenophobia, ethnic, religious and racial hatred were set, and they have triumphed in the 20th century.
Bosnia was the only exception in the whole of Europe. On the foundations of the earlier history and high standards of tolerance, the original Late-Hellenic multilateral culture through syncretism of early Christianity, late Byzantine and early Slavic cultural and religious traditions, was preserved from the 11th century onward; this was transformed into a dual religious and cultural situation in the Bosnian domain, and it acted as a contact zone between the Catholic Europe of the West and the Byzantine East. The rise of the Neo-Manichean Bosnian church strengthened this multilateral character of Bosnia.
As of the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire and Islamic cultural-religious complex played a key role in Bosnian history. This new momentum had only strengthened and further developed the primary and original multilateral nature of Bosnia. This quality was emphasized by the birth of a new urban way of life, with arts and crafts and trade, exchange and openness of society, whose core was based upon an inherent respect for the principle of this civilization and cultural model--as opposed to upon religion, race or nationality. Islam has, in fact, completed the creation of this model. Islam did not destroy, exterminate on restrain anything in Bosnia. On the contrary, everything continued to live and thrive in its original and natural form. With the historical settlement in Bosnia of Spanish Jews, having been expelled from Christian Europe, the inherent character of multilateralism and diversity was further emphasized in Bosnia.
Such a Bosnia survived the second Europe only to indicate the birth of a third, the one that is esteemed today. Europe, born after the bloodstained wars of the twentieth century, the Europe of people, communications and cultures, and not of national borders and states.
A centuries-old confrontation with Bosnia is repeated in its bloodiest and most genocidal form, the last countdown before a third Europe is born.
MOSTA R 2004 WORKSHOP

Second Stage

Istanbul, July 24-August 18,1995
Amir PASIC
PROJECT SUMMARY

Phase two of the urban preservation of the Bosnia and Hercegovina project consists of a studio work during the Spring semester at several universities, and the workshop focuses on the reconstruction of the Old Town in Mostar. The Workshop is to be held in Istanbul from July 24 to August 18,1995.
The second workshop aims to summarize the results of the works of the Mostar 2004 project in the period of August 1994-August 1995 and to continue the research and design for the Old Town in Mostar, through 43 different projects and through a general urban concept of the city.
During 1994-1 996, technical studies and working drawings will be completed for the Old Bridge plus several adjacent complexes in the Mostar Old Town, as a first step in the reconstruction process.

INTRODUCTION

Within the international architectural educational community there is great interest in assisting the reconstruction of Bosnia, whose rich multicultural architectural heritage has been a persistent target of the current war in Bosnia and Hercegovina. This interest is based on an underlying premise that the speedy reconstruction of Bosnia’s architectural heritage is a basic prerequisite to the national healing process.
The identification of self with place, as exemplified by architectural symbols as they existed in times of normalcy is an integral part of the human psyche the village square, the local mosque, church, synagogue, or, for example, the famous bridge built in Mostar in 1566 over the Neretva river.
When such objects of self identity are destroyed, much of the human spirit goes with it; Architectural Heritage is deeply intertwined with a persons sense of identity, existence, and belonging to a particular place and time.
One is often not aware of this connection until that heritage is destroyed, leaving the psyche rudderless in a disintegrating world. In such a climate, the speedy reconstruction of the familiar symbols of architecture becomes essential to the national healing process, signaling the return to a more civilized environment where self and place can once again be reunited.

PLAN OF ACTION

To prepare for the process of reconstructing Bosnia’s multicultural heritage, it is here proposed that an international educational supporting effort precedes and parallels the actual physical reconstruction through a three-phased process. The International Multidisciplinary Program for Urban Preservation of Bosnia and Hercegovina will engage the attention and participation of an international community of architectural professionals, educators, historians and students, in conjunction with their Bosnian counterparts.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

1. Preservation of the thousand year building heritage of the multicultural Bosnia and Hercegovina.
2. Development of an integrated process of urban preservation for Bosnia and Hercegovina through the formation of a practical system of education over the next decade.
3. Establishment of an international network of prominent schools and cultural organizations for urban preservation to assist and support the rebuilding process.
Phase 1: Mostar 2004, a pilot workshop for the rebuilding of a multicultural Bosnia and Hercegovina, Istanbul, July 25-August 25,1994 (see enclosed Workshop report).
Phase 2: Establishment of an International Support Group
Time: 1994-1995 academic year
Program: Several universities in Europe, the United States, and the developing world will offer studio design courses to students through their regular curriculum on topics related to the reconstruction of the built environment of Bosnia. Background documentation for the studio will be shared. Whenever possible, Bosnian students and faculty will be involved through inter-university exchanges.
A committee of individuals representing participating institutions will be formed to coordinate academic and other activities related to the project.
This committee will define the participants’ inter-relations, budget and policy.
This phase will end with a second summer workshop to run from July 24-August 18, 1995.
Phase 3: Broadening the Support Network of International Cooperation
Time: 1995-1996 academic year.
Program: As a result of the work completed through the Summer 1994 workshop and the studio courses offered at a number of universities during the 1994-1995 academic year, a documentation packet will be put together on Mostar including maps, surveys, visual documentation, bibliography and suggested studio problems. This packet will be distributed to schools of architecture around the world who may wish to offer similar studio courses through their curriculum, particularly those with established conservation components. In future years, similar packets on other Bosnian cities might be prepared and distributed to maintain high interest around the world in Bosnian reconstruction. The studio on historical aspects of Bosnia’s architectural heritage will continue throughout the years.
Founder: Bosnian authorities and private individuals with the collaboration of the International Support Group.
Time: September 1996
Type of school: To aid the reconstruction process, a practical school of conservation will be established, based on high international standards and on a combination of classroom work with practical work in the field. The reconstruction of Bosnia’s multicultural heritage will become the laboratory for the practical application of an educational curriculum covering all periods of Bosnia’s architectural heritage.
An active exchange program with architectural schools around the world, particularly schools with a conservation component, will form the basic element of the curriculum. Throughout both short-term summer workshops or during school semesters, students from other schools may come to Bosnia for practical, applied work experience while contributing to the process of reconstruction.
The first phase of this educational endeavor has been the Pilot Workshop on Mostar’s Old Town, held in Istanbul from July 25-August 25, 1994 and entitled Mostar 2004. (The number 2004 refers to the year when the restoration of the Old Town in Mostar will hopefully be completed).
The second phase of this endeavor will be a workshop to be held in Istanbul from July 24-August 18,
1995.
Objectives
One of the project’s goals is to gather students and professionals from architectural schools in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, including a multicultural team from Bosnia itself, to work in cooperation and unity in preparation for the rebuilding of Mostar Old Town, a town that for five hundred years exemplified a place where people of many cultures and beliefs could live and work together in peace.
It also represents the second stage in the formulation of a larger, international support network to provide moral and financial support, as well as advice, expertise and opportunities for both collaboration and educational exchange in the reconstruction process. Perhaps more important, the presence of an international element of concerned architects, students and planners can function as a buffer between three ethnic communities learning to work together again.
The end product of these workshops combined with studio works will be the preparation of an urban restoration plan and a methodology for the first stage in the restoration plans in the restoration of Mostar Old Town. This restoration plan and methodology should be used in the actual restoration plans for Mostar Old Town.
The workshop also seeks to draw attention to the destruction of cultural monuments in Bosnia and Hercegovina and to the importance of their reconstruction. The ultimate goal, of course is to provide a useful case study for other towns in Bosnia and Hercegovina destroyed in the current war and for all other towns of the world which are under a permanent process of destruction.

Bibliography:
1.The Mostar 2004 Workshop Report ‘94, IRCICA, Istanbul 1994.
2.Islamic Architecture in Bosnia and Hercegovina by Amir Pasic, IRCICA, Istanbul 1994.
3.Stari Most in Mostar by Amir Pasic, IRCICA, Istanbul 1995.
4.The Master Plan of Reconstruction and Revitalization of the Old Town in Mostar, Mostar 1990, by Amir Pasic et al, English Version, IRCICA 1995.
5.Bosnia: A Short History, by Noel Malcolm, Mc Milan, 1994,
6.Why Bosnia? Writings on the Balkan War, edited by Rabia AIi and Lawrence Lifschultz, Pamphleteer’s Press, 1993.
7.The Muslims of Bosnia and Hercegovina, edited by Mark Pinson, Harvard University Press, 1994.
8.The National Question in Yugoslavia, Origins, History, Politics, Cornell University Press, 1984.