A few weeks back ReThink Space and Studio Snøhetta a world famous practice of urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, and interior architecture office based in Oslo, Norway and New York, USA challenged the young architects in Prishtina organizing a workshop from September 18-19, to design possible interventions in the city’s public spaces.

The following article, by Cristina Marí elaborates the creative solutions to the respond of city’s public spaces, originally appeared in KOSOVO 2.0 as “Playing with the dark corners of Prishtina”.

“Putting Prishtina’s darker corners into play.” that’s how Rron Tresi of the Rethink Space design and architecture collective defines the goal of a workshop they held on September 18 and 19. The workshop was led by two architects from Norway’s renowned Snohetta firm, Frank Nodland and Ingebjorg Skaare. The participants consisted of 25 young architecture students and recent graduates, who were given a chance to create five “interventions” in Prishtina’s public spaces. Their inspiration came from five artistic disciplines: sculpture, dance, music, poetry, and painting. See the video below for what they came up with.

Snohetta, founded in 1989 and based in Oslo and New York, defines itself by its areas of practice: “urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, and brand design.” If this isn’t clear, just picture the stereotypes you probably maintain about Norwegian design; sparseness, cleanliness and giant windows hosting a view of a vast, fjord-studded Scandinavian landscape. If stereotypes aren’t enough, check out some of their designs on their Facebook page, or on their new website). Snohetta architects Ingebjorg Skaare and Frank Nodland were only in Prishtina for two and a half days, but they had time to get an initial impression of the city — of its mistakes and its atmosphere. Kosovo 2.0 stole them for a few minutes to talk about the city and their vision of urban planning:

Videos & images courtesy of kosovotwopointzero.com