Pastor van Aarskerk

• 10.00 – 17.00 houyrs
• Opening at 11 am!
• Atrium Stadhuis
• Adres: Spui 70

The city at war – from Sarajevo to Kharkiv

On the Day of Architecture The Hague we show special buildings and what architecture can do for the quality of our living environment in our city. This year we pay a lot of attention to our ‘house of democracy’, the Binnenhof and the temporary housing of the Dutch Parliament. Only 3 borders away from us a democracy is attacked and buildings and cities are bombed. With the exhibition ‘RE: Warchitecture’ we show how this destruction is documented and how it was done before, in Sarajevo.

The photo of cellist Vedran Smailovic in Sarajevo (1992) and the photo of cellist Denys Karachevtsev in Kharkiv (2022) show the link between Bosnia & Herzegovina and Ukraine, photographed exactly 30 years apart.

This exhibition shows a small part of the original exhibition ‘Warchitecture’ where the destructions during the first year of the Siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996) were documented by architects and citizens of Sarajevo. Clandestinely, the ‘Warchitecture’ exhibition was transported from Sarajevo in 1993 to travel around the world and raise alarm about the severity of the destruction.

arallel to the panels of Sarajevo’s ‘Warchitecture’ project are panels with images of the cellist Denys Karachevtsev playing amid destroyed architecture of Kahrkiv. Also on display is the ongoing documentation of the destruction in Ukraine by a research collective Bellingcat and the initiative of scan UA to 3D scan endangered buildings. It is also possible to view the destruction in Ukraine in virtual reality (including the project ‘VR-museum of war memory‘).

The goal is to have this exhibition travel around the world, as “Warchitecture’ did thirty years ago, to raise the alarm about the ongoing destruction of people and their cities in Ukraine.