The Architecture of Belonging

Abstract

The essay “Architecture of Belonging” explores how architecture in a contemporary globalized context can remain rooted in culture, identity, and the emotional experience of a community. Through theoretical concepts such as cultural archetype, third space, semiotics, and cosmotectonics, the essay defends the thesis that belonging is not a style but an ethical act, and architecture is more than a building – it is a spatial expression of shared values, memory, and the spirituality of space. This scientific essay stems from my empirical and theoretical insights with which I developed my architectural practice, first intuitively and later cognitively, as a form of cultural production with two social mandates, one is to be useful and the other, as a communication medium, to promote the cultural and spiritual values of the community in which it is created. I have called the architecture resulting from such a creative process the architecture of belonging and associate it with the Sarajevo school of architecture, whose educational practices were crucial for my formative architectural habitus and for the emergence of those achievements from my opus that I classify under the phrase architecture of belonging, and whose exemplary examples illustrate this essay.