The Mahala recipe

architect Amir Vuk-Zec
project Kibe restaurant, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
written by Demir Mensur


The image of the city of Sarajevo is defined by its spine that lies longitudinally in a valley, surrounded by slopes covered by a multi-coloured carpet of mostly smaller constructions. Sarajevo can be read like a film or storyboard that starts in the Orient and develops towards the West. The Orient brought into the city a dualism of a functional separation of the city into čaršija, a business district in the Miljacka valley, and mahala (Turkish Quarter), residential areas raised on the slopes. The grid of streets and constructed volumes in the valley spread into the capillaries of streets, backstreets and steep alleys.