SYNCRETISM OF ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN FORMS - DEFINING SYNCRETIC SITUATIONS ON THE EXAMPLE OF SARAJEVO ČARŠI
Keywords:
syncretism, postcolonial, Sarajevo Čarši, architectural heritageAbstract
The main value of architectural heritage is defined by the selected set of attributes ranging from the substantial ones, such as form or design for example, to the intangible ones, including relevant social processes and cultural production (UNESCO). Within complex historical urban areas, characterized by historical-stylistic stratification, spatial and architectural forms have been observed in which many incoherent practices, traditions and logics are confronted, and whose ambiguity requires that their nature and the product itself (urban or architectural form) are being better explained.
The Sarajevo historical core is the area where the described multifaceted contacts were observed. They are a consequence of the confrontation of two cultural circles, Ottoman as Eastern (native, oriental), and Austro-Hungarian as European (Western), not only in a simple binary relation old-new, but through the intertwining of cultural dialogue on the line of power and subordinate periphery.
As an analytical and methodological framework for the assessment and explanation of the described spatial and architectural occurrence, this study applies the theory of syncretism as a phenomenology that best defines the processes in the background and the architectural-urban resolution itself.
In the first part of the paper, theories of syncretic situations offered a reference for the basic structural definition of these contacts.
In the second part, syncretism is questioned on concrete samples placed in the space of the Sarajevo Čarši. The factor of social action is introduced as a corrective element of monosyllable combinations of confrontations. This social action distorts the canonical practices of the colonial paradigm, which places this part of the paper in the analytical framework of postcolonial studies.
The analysis of the sample clarifies syncretism in the levels of expression, and depending on the meaning of the background dialogue centre-periphery. The meaning ranges from the pragmatic (Mula Mustafa Bašeskija Street), to the one that tries to integrate modernization into the traditional spatial framework (Kundurdžiluk, Mali and Veliki Ćurčiluk), to its transition to the level of symbolic forms (Baščaršija Square).
Conclusions and consequently the results of this study should provide the primary theoretical pattern for defining syncretic spaces in architectural-urban theoretical canonization, which has so far mainly focused on identity, while the essence of syncretic theories is the identification as a result of conflict.
Assessing the meaning of problematic spaces is also necessary because syncretic situations, although coherent, are always only temporal, unstable. They will inevitably demand new resolutions, which, with proper valorisation, can be directed towards sustainable outcomes.
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