Konak and Villa: Convergences and Transmutations of the Representative Residence in 19th-Century Southeast Europe.

The villa as we know it was born in an age of pandemics and epidemics. The patricians’ withdrawal from the congested cities of Tuscany, the Veneto, and Rome to their environs helped establish the design of representative country houses as a reputable artistic task. Later, improved communications made possible the villa’s reinvention as a place of permanent residence on the fringes of Europe’s industrializing cities. Its erstwhile seclusion was exchanged for a clustering in emerging neighborhoods of the middle and upper classes. Such zonings had become part and parcel of 19th-century urbanization.
In the continent’s southeast, the modern-age villa of Western provenance encountered and consecutively transmuted (but not necessarily supplanted) traditional forms of elite habitation. Of the many terms associated with such, konak was by far the most commonly used. Beyond its broader meaning, this term also designated more specifically the residence of the provincial administrator (and, eventually, of provincial administration).
In their most typical variants, villa and konak shared many features – notably their detached standing, the elevated socio-economic status of their owners, and the refined interiors and gardens in which this status was echoed. The two types also markedly differed in other aspects – notably the typical (modern) villa’s conspicuous visibility from the public street, contrasting with the konak’s traditional concealment behind walls.
Our conference seeks to bring together current research on representative residences in Southeast Europe. It focuses on works of the 19th century and aims to document various stages and phenomena, while recognizing the singularity of each object. We are particularly interested in discussing how the architecture of elite habitations corresponded to functions (such as co-use as workplace) and desired qualities (such as the ability to survey the surroundings, with elements like verandas and towers as interfaces); how ambitions of distinction were communicated (e.g. through symmetry or other markers of monumentality); and how the residence communicated with the city’s core area and outskirts as well as with their surrounding public space. We also invite the addressing of issues of preservation and rehabilitation for public uses, as well as questions of interior design and landscaping.

The conference is organized by European Research Council (ERC) project no. 758099 (see ercbos.univie.ac.at), hosted at the University of Vienna’s Department of Art History, in cooperation with the Cantonal Institution for the Protection of Cultural, Historical and Nature Heritage (Sarajevo) and support by the Österreichisches Kulturforum Sarajewo. The event will take place at the Fakultet islamskih nauka Univerziteta u Sarajevu (FIN), Ćemerlina 54, 71000 Sarajevo. Attendees are kindly asked to register with ajla.bajramovicunivie.ac.at.

PROGRAM

Thursday, April 27
18:00 – Welcome addresses
- Boris TRAPARA (Kantonalni Zavod za zaštitu kulturno-historijskog i prirodnog nasljeđa, Sarajevo)
- Maximilian HARTMUTH (University of Vienna, project “Islamic architecture and Orientalizing style in Habsburg Bosnia”)
19:30 – Reception

Friday, April 28
09:00 – Welcome and introduction
09:30 – 10:30 Session 1
- Ibrahim KRZOVIĆ (Sarajevo): “Konak i vila: Sličnosti i razlike između rezidencijalnih i ladanjskih objekata u Habsburškoj Bosni 1878-1918”
- Tijana ZEBIĆ (Belgrade): “Konaks in Serbia during the first half of the 19th century: Recent research”

11:00 – 12:00 Session 2
- Caroline JÄGER-KLEIN (Vienna): “Early adaptive reuse: The Ottoman Konak of the Viziers in Travnik and its transition to a Habsburg-Bosnian Kreisamt”
- Jelena RADOVANOVIĆ (Münster): “Negotiating Ottoman heritage: The afterlife of Hafiz Pasha's Konak in Niš”

12:00 – 14:00 Object visit # 1 and lunch break

14:00 – 15:30 Session 3
- Dragan DAMJANOVIĆ (Zagreb): “Between villa and castle: The residential complex of archduke Ferdinand Maximilian on Lokrum near Dubrovnik”
- Haris DERVIŠEVIC (Sarajevo): “Londža: a forgotten piece of the Bosnian mosaic”
- Tülay ARTAN (Istanbul): “Seclusion and contemplation in Ottoman seaside villas”

16:00 – Object visit # 2

Saturday, April 29
09:00 – 09:30 Recapitulation
09:30 – 10:30 Session 4
- Andrea BAOTIĆ-RUSTANBEGOVIĆ (Munich): “Austro-Hungarian villas on Džidžikovac: History and significance of fin-de-siècle residential architecture in creating an «elite Sarajevo settlement»”
- Maximilian HARTMUTH (Vienna): “Moorish modern? Space and identity in Muslim elite residences of the late Habsburg period in Bosnia”

11:00 – 15:00 Object visits # 3-5 and lunch break

15:30 – 16:30 Session 5
- Sara MONDINI (Venice): “‘Moorish style’ in southern Italy: The case of 19th-century villas in Salento”
- Ajla BAJRAMOVIĆ (Vienna): “Power(ful) by association? Habsburg-period residences of Muslim entrepreneurs in Northeast Bosnia”

16:45 – 17:30 Closing discussion