Competition for the Conceptual Architectural Design of the Congress Centre in Trebinje

The competition was to design the new Congress Centre in Trebinje, Bosnia, as well as a comprehensive master plan which included a hotel, a sports centre, city facilities, and a park.

Our first objective was to harmoniously integrate the project with the surroundings, avoiding disruptions to nature and fostering symbiosis where the landscape mutually benefited from the project and vice versa. We aimed for our design to be ecological, with a zero carbon footprint, as it could not be otherwise. The future of architecture, transarchitecture, relied on the symbiotic interaction between technology, architecture, nature, and humanity—an architecture that sought for the project to contribute to improving both the natural environment and the human experience in a cycle of mutual benefit.

The second objective of our project was to give great importance to the historical and cultural footprint of the site. To achieve this, we repurposed the abandoned old railway as a seminal idea, turning it into a winding pedestrian path that also served as the generator of the building. This transformation not only respectfully honoured the memory of the site’s past but also offered a reuse of it as a backbone element of a future natural park. The conservation of memory was fundamental in our proposal.

Our third objective was to minimise our intervention in the surrounding wild forest, preserving its integrity. We aimed to leave the smallest footprint possible, allowing nature to remain in its most pristine and undisturbed state.