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The biggest issue in many lives (and in many developing countries such as mine, still having the tiredness of wars) is that the individuals do not receive proper education on the matter of sustainability, ecological approaches, the reasons behind such concepts and practices as well as the importance of what they represent, both in institutions and at home. They learn somewhat 'expired' information that shouldn't define the reality of today at all, and they keep implementing practices that damage life itself only because they are taught. Thus the earth keeps getting worse in terms of resources, health and impact, all for the lack of awareness in the first place. For those who have never heard these emergencies, sustainability is very abstract and distant. I see our role, as physical and conceptual influencers, to keep mirroring the global issues and problems and to try to educate the society on this matter. A very simple website that flickers the idea of materiality could be this: https://materialspalette.org/palette/

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In my home, the societal struggles and wars have wiped out the sense of belonging and getting together for common goals so it is very interesting and meaningful to me to be able to grasp the importance of people and of what they do, versus how it actually changes the world. When the community knows how to get together and they know what they want, everything sits into place and things improve. In Finland, as in many visionary countries, the government policies and community support the aim of sustainable living and development and they are one of the main drivers of action. I was also very impressed with Kere’s talk during this week, especially because I related his home with mine. He shows how a person can change the world, his world, if he just has the reason for it. His motivation was what I found to be missing in my people due to disturbing near history, but it was also a hard and long road which started with convincing the community itself. Some of the glimpses of the urban environment and community spirit, can be found in an interesting guide I found lately from @kennethandresen, pictures of which I am posting below: “Kosovo Tourist Guide 1978” - Published by Tourist Association of Kosovo. Finally, I can conclude to the ideas with a statement, that the power is within community as much as it is within their past and present experiences.

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This is actually a building used as a movie set. I came across it lately and it arouse my curiosity, making me feel better about the environment in it. As an office building, it portrays workers that use these buffers to change places or walk from their desk to the common meeting room through the green corridor.

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Bioclimatic design caught my attention during these lectures the most because it is something that has traces in my community. I used to work in releve and restoration a couple of months after my bachelor’s graduation, where I had the opportunity to meet the architectural past of my town.  The existing old building are using thermal mass and local materials of their time. The walls are 40-50 cm thick, with old Yugoslavian solid clay bricks and they have literally two sets of same windows, creating a kind of double frame. The floors and roof are sometimes made of branches (tërshka) and wood. All these houses have front garden as a must and a backyard in many cases. The first floor’s (ground floor) main hall was used as a stall for animals during cold season so it could also warm up the upper floor. In the second floor the corridor was completely open towards the balcony, with no windows or walls, making the corridor another outdoor space and leaving the rooms the only living spaces. This open hall was called çardak and in some cases was positioned towards receiving the dominant wind direction. None of these houses ever had a mechanical conditioning system and they activated thermal mass for a period of time after which they used wood and stove for heating. There are graphical representations and pictures of these buildings in Emin Riza’s books about Prizren and albanian culture. Here is a snapshot of a building from the book that shows the çardak, from his book: “BANESA POPULLORE E PRIZRENIT” [Riza, E. (2013). Banesa popullore e Prizrenit. Tiranë, Shqipëri. Retrieved from: https://books.google.com/books/about/Banesa_popullore_e_Prizrenit.html?id=ESSKzQEACAAJ]

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This week’s lectures were very mind opening especially because the examples and content made me realize and categorize my country’s logics and how and why it changed over the course of time from eco-cultural and vernacular towards something more complex but I also found that I am relating Nordic architecture with the eco-medical logic regarding their aim to achieve good indoor qualities and connection with nature! As an overall perspective, I enjoyed reading and will enjoy using the phrase “Less bad is not good”.  It is very important to remember we should consider all the aspects and even have a small checklist to remind ourselves of these different approaches.

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Think twice (reuse), rethink (used materials), think ahead (flexible for future). Very constructive concepts of building use and how we see it, especially to know when the building ‘has to die’ and when it can be recovered. But what about the materials around us? Where do we find them? How do we evaluate their properties and efficiency? Does it change with time? For me, maybe the biggest question is whether to choose clay or concrete, [https://www.globmac.com/en/differences-between-clay-bricks-and-concrete-blocks/] since I am still living in a house of 50cm thick walls made of two rows of pressed red clay bricks in 1969. As a habitant I can say that I have a very low heating load in my house which is compensated with electric heating, and the rest is taken care of by the building itself. Is cooler in summer and bearable during winter. With an initiative of smart tech for clean energy, it could very easily be upgraded to a less impact home. So why concrete? Why thinner walls? Searching more, I came across the article: “Unfired clay masonry: An introduction to low-impact building materials”[https://www.bre.co.uk/filelibrary/pdf/projects/low_impact_materials/IP16_11.pdf], which also talks about the clay bricks and low impact materials. Of course it considers the problem of humidity which is the biggest problem in my home as well!

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I want to reflect on ‘sacrificial spaces/basement’ as it was and perhaps still is an approach used in buildings to avoid and escape bad living conditions by leaving the ground floor for parking, storage and so on. In Kosovo, this was what they did in buildings, except that first floor was also a place for keeping animals during winter. Later the society started to be involved in craftworks [https://www.ecmandryshe.org/repository/docs/PRIZRENI-VENDTAKIM_I_CIVILIZIMEVE_eng.pdf] and the ground floor started turning into workshops. The street state as well as street namings changed; urban areas were known of the crafts that were active in certain streets instead, like the blacksmith street (Farkëtarët), the saddler street (Saracët) etc. Now, however, things are quite different from the start and instead of learning from the past and the existing examples, the industry is still trying to replicate certain global trends of building. It means that for my home’s context, the social media and wrong placed admiration for luxury and aesthetics, decides on the new buildings rather than experience and research based knowledge which is a fundamental mistake. We happen to have skipped the part where we had to go back to these ways of living, evaluate their performance (both building performance and habitant experience) and then better them, working together with the users.