Since the beginning of the academic year, the new chair of Urban Architecture offers studios in the Architecture track. The graduation theme of this year is spolia. A term from archaeology, spolia are the left-overs or ‘spoils’ of a building, which find themselves back in a new structure. The students were asked to introduce themselves together with a personal piece of spolia.  The spoils, taken to the studio by students, illustrate that every-day artefacts can change function,  carry emotional narratives or transform in meaning.

For a large majority of the student body of TU Delft, the four-year-long siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996), is a thing they might have learned from history books. However, for the inhabitants of Sarajevo, the small red-raisin-filled craters from mortar damage are a daily reminder of their tragic past and what became the longest siege of a city in the history of modern warfare.

Nietzsche (1876) states: “I believe, indeed, that we are all suffering from a consuming fever of history and ought at least to recognize that we are suffering from it”. In the case of Lithuania, the years 1944-1991 consisted of a period of destructive occupation; the Church was suppressed, the intelligentsia was harassed and obstructed and massive deportations were carried out to eliminate any resistance to collectivization or support of partisans. However, the evolution of thought still continued and so did the evolution of the built environment. The question is: what symbolic values should be considered while reimagining the architecture of occupation?