Renown award-winning architect Amir Vuk Zec told N1 on Tuesday that Sarajevo was his “biggest teacher,” and explained why the city is different, calling it an “alley between the East and the West.”

He said he grew up “in this city, in this valley, in a space which is pretty limited but gives a lot of information about space.”

“Rare are cities – although there are some that are bigger and more beautiful – where you can physically feel that passage between the East and the West,” said the architect, known for his way of combining the modern with the traditional.

He exemplified it with Hotel Europe, in Sarajevo’s Old Town, calling it the “most important hotel in the Balkans.”

“If you take a room in that hotel with a view toward the Carsija (Old Town), the east, what you see is Asia. If you turn right, you look to the West. This city provides that lesson of a feeling for space,” he said.

But the best view of Sarajevo can, according to Vuk Zec, be observed from the hills southeast of the Old Town.

“The afternoon view from that side of mount Trebevic is wonderful,” he said, quoting Belgrade architecture professor Bogdan Bogdanovic who said “there is not a more magnificent entry point into Sarajevo than when entering it via the railroad tracks toward Bistrik. Sarajevo opens up to you like a cake with lots of candles.”

But Vuk Zec also criticised the city’s new architecture.

“We have left all the thinking to the municipalities. We have no general strategy,” he said, adding that the city leaves the impression that unhappy people live in it.

Sarajevo has four municipalities, each having its own development plans.

“By building Sarajevo, we are also building ourselves, our identity. It cannot just be the job of one institution or us architects. All the people, including authors, painters and artists, need to get involved (…),” he added.

No plans are being prepared for construction, and it is always flexible, he added.

“Control over space is control over us and it is always under strong pressure by politics.”