Kosovo (Republic of)

Everything what the centre and the city in general provided for years for everyone, in the period of 1990s for Albanians was dispersed into pieces and shrank into the private houses and locations in the edge areas of the city. A house became a school, a restaurant, a promotion place, an office, an art gallery, a hospital and a home at the same time. This reversal and merge of private and public, of closed and open, inside and outside, intimacy and transparency on one side affected the housing typology and urban fabric in general extending the city further into its margins. The private space opened to the public making the house a metaphor for the city during occupation period. The city became a net of heterotopic spaces parallel to official public spaces and institutions. Every house provided a piece of a mirror of the city. All these could be seen as “places where things found their ground and stability” during a very uncertain, violent and unstable time in Kosovo.