Building Blocks Mostar, 2015 – children from both sides of the divided city create new architecture together with local architects.

Since 2012, Färgfabriken has collaborated with the city of Mostar through the New Urban Topologies project to promote a cross-border dialogue between the city’s groupings. In 2014, the collaboration with the city was expanded in the exhibition project Patchwork of Narratives, a project that examined the cities of Mostar and Beirut from a human perspective.

The city of Mostar is a city strongly defined by physical and mental fragmentation, under many years the Bosnien War divided the city between Bosniaks and Croats. The legacy of the war is still very present and undoubtedly most distinctly in the very central no man’s land, the District, a hollow urban buffer zone between the city’s ethnic communities. In Building Blocks Mostar, we are bridging the divided city, children from both sides are working together with each other and local architects to make new architecture. An inital workshop with children and architects was held by Färgfabriken and Ada Mostar at The Music shool 25-26th of April 2015, before the exhitition opened.

During October 2015 an additional workshop was held to develop one of the five projects called Tornado of Fun. 

Related

Building Blocks is a concept developed by Färgfabriken and Medium, based on children’s participations in architecture. The project investigates the accepted roles in the building process, specifically the relationship between architect and client. The idea is based on children, between 5 and 16 years old, as clients and commissioners of architecture. Each child or group of children collaborates with different architects. Each architect’s proposal is built in scale 1:1 and exhibited.