Most Mira Peace Centre awarded Sustainable Construction award at Venice Biennale

Most Mira (Bridge of Peace), an SRT grantee, in partnership with Project V Architecture, won the International LafargeHolcim Silver Award for Sustainable Construction at the Venice Architecture Biennale in November 2021. Selected from a pool of nearly 5000 socially and environmentally sustainable projects across 121 countries, the organisation was awarded for the forthcoming Peace Centre in Republika Srpska. It was the only awarded project from Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the wider Balkans and South-East European Region. 

Established in 2009 in the Prijedor area of Republika Srpska, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Most Mira uses the arts, peacebuilding residentials, and architectural projects to support reconciliation and peace-building. The organisation was founded by Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, and is one of a few civil society initiatives to foster more inclusive memorialization across the region. 

The Most Mira Peace Centre will be located in the Prijedor area that has the highest number of war criminals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and is proximate to Bosnia’s largest mass graves beyond Srebrenica. The building site lies between two divided villages: Petrov Gaj (Bosnian Serb) and Kevljani (Muslim Bosniak) and is meant to give “a permanent physical location by salvaging and transforming a war-ruined house into a vibrant public facility for cultural and reconciliation activities.”

The Peace Centre consists of an art studio, a theatre, and a craft workshop as well as accommodation for visitors facilities. The building will source raw and recycled local materials and has been designed in line with local traditions through a participatory design process. For example, the earth will be gathered from a number of Serb and Bosniak villages that were sites of tragic events during the 1990s war. By gathering soil, mixing it and then compacting into the structure, the Peace Centre will literally be formed from the land of conflict. The environmental design strategies also include rainwater collection and reuse and the Centre is projected to be financially self-sufficient over time.

Through the Centre, Most Mira will provide non-segregated, non-politicised, secular social spaces for creative and professional opportunities for youth. The Peace Centre will offer arts and culture programming for young people across different ethnic backgrounds, peacebuilding initiatives, participatory architecture, social enterprise support and research opportunities to help future generations peacefully coexist. 

Watch this video to learn more about the Most Mira Peace Centre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHA5QfXJLBc.