To Meet Galileo on Day Fourteen

‘To Meet Galileo on Day Fourteen’ highlights the significance of overlooked buildings embodying traumas from the resistance era before the 1998 Kosovo War. Through a spatial study of the former political prison of Gjilan, guided by the survivors’ narratives, it explores new ways of heritage preservation in no need of physical interventions.

‘To Meet Galileo on Day Fourteen’ follows the narrative of my site visit with Mr. A, a former political prisoner of 1983 who was incarcerated for his beliefs that contradicted the political regime of the time. It starts with our car ride to Gjilan and ends in cell thirteen—segmenting the study in four spatial scales: the city, the square, the building and the cell. Moving from one scale to another, different architectural artefacts come into play, shifting from maps, drawings and models. \nInspired by Karl Schlogel’s ‘In Space We Read Time’, the project uses maps to study the undisclosed spatial links of the city. By navigating maps, Mr. A is distanced from the territory and is no longer an observer in the streets. From a zenithal point, he unlocks new perceptions and re-writes the history of his city.\nWhen drawing the soundscape of the prison’s surroundings, the attention shifts to the adjacent theatre whose sounds cannot penetrate the prison walls. As the drawing hand follows the city's sounds, undiscovered barriers of the prison become apparent on paper.\nMoving to the smallest scale, the project addresses the prison as the most simplistic form of an enclosed space: a ceiling, a floor, a window and a door. Yet, in the prison of Gjilan, none of these architectural components seem to have played their traditional role. Through detailed model-making, Mr. A recalls the use of windows for secret letter exchanges, doors as torturing tools and walls for communication through encoded knocking.\nThus, the project tackles three architectural debates. Firstly, it aims to focus on ordinary structures rather than remarkable buildings which have long caught the attention of contemporaries. Secondly, it uses artefacts not as means of representation, but rather as tools for discovering and preserving undisclosed cultural heritage. Thirdly, it separates the discipline of architecture from environmental depletion by proposing documenting as an architectural practice. Acknowledging the agency of the architect’s toolkit in unveiling undisclosed histories, it states that architecture does not equal building.