Natural Caves and Architecture Carved in the Rocks in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Students of the Faculty of Architecture in Sarajevo, through the course

Architecture of the Old Age, were able to get acquainted with “architecture

carved in rock”, and only a very limited number of examples - the archi

tecture of ancient Egypt, ancient Greek architecture in Asia Minor (Lycia),

and the architecture of ancient Persia. Many examples of this architectural

expression remained unknown to them: the architecture of ancient and

medieval India, the architecture of ancient and medieval China, the archi

tecture of the ancient Middle East (the area of today’s Israel, Jordan, Saudi

Arabia), vernacular architecture around the world from different historical

periods. As a teacher at the Faculty of Architecture in Sarajevo, the author,

after switching to the education of architecture students in accordance with

the “Bologna process” (2003), presented “architecture carved in the rocks”

through a series of subjects, through all levels of education (undergraduate,

master’s and doctoral studies), within the framework of processing narrow

er topics of architecture: constructive systems in architecture, bioclimatic

architecture, architecture as an energy system, architecture in context. The

complex process of creating architecture and explaining its appearance was

elaborated by the author (1988) in his doctoral dissertation. The topic “Ar

chitecture Carved in Rocks” was elaborated according to this model, which

on the one hand confirmed its applicability, and on the other hand enabled

students to look at the highly dispersed appearance of architecture in an ex

tremely systematic way, without losing sight of its basic elements: environ

ment, man, boundaries and perspectives. The aim of this work is to show

(and through examples in Bosnia and Herzegovina) that natural caves, with

more or less “refining”, are still used today, and that “carving architecture

into rocks” is an all-time and planetary phenomenon.