The Svrzo House in Sarajevo (BiH)

BOSNIAN TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURE

The Svrzo House is representative example of the Ottomans’ building of the housing objects in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

With the arrival of the Ottomans in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by the middle of the 15th century, a new housing settlements were formed in the Oriental style. At the places where only the Medieval villages or smaller towns existed, a large trade, political and religous centres began to arise.

Typical example of that were Sarajevo and Mostar, which from a moderate settlements became central urban areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the other hand, some towns, which previously represented the important town centres, like Jajce, in the Ottoman’s period, they prolonged its continuity of the urban life, retaining even the objects from the previous period. What is important to point out is that the concept of living in that period began to be formed on the basis of Islamic religious and ethical principles. On the basis of that, a typical type of the oriental house bagan to develop, what means that life of one family was now turned towards the interior of a house, and not towards a street.

Of course, the housing objects in Bosnia and Herzegovina had kept some previous charateristics, particularly those which gravitated towards the Mediaterannean, or some that we can find in the middle Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet, what began to characterize the luxirous life space, adjusting of objects to the religious needs, such as orientation towards Mecca, a large internal courtyards and in the constructive-aesthetic sense, the architecture of the external closed balconies and hardly emphasized wall surfaces. It should be empahasized here that such type of building was contributed by the development of a wealthy trade and noble level of the population and the majority of those objects were their ownership.

On the other hand, it should be pointed out, that luxirous housing building, in the sense of palaces of large proportions, was never present with the Ottomans, while it was present with the European aristocracy. Istanbul of today offers a few of such historical buildings, and even those that were kept are more or less moderate comparing to what we can see in the West.

The rest of the article you can read in the magazine.