Sport and genealogy of the “Open” in Prishtina

In ancient societies, as well as in modern ones, sport has been one of the fundamental artifices for establishing a so-called “common ground”. Hence, unsurprisingly, sports activities are crucial in the revitalization processes of disturbed and marginal sites. By examining the case of Prishtina, the capital of the newborn state of Kosovo, this paper aims to investigate the role of architecture and landscape design as a political and spatial device in the generation of a common ground, namely a physical and ideal space where stories, experiences and knowledge can be shared. A role that may subvert the rhetoric figuration of space – typical of all totalitarian regimes, including the communist ones – without necessarily waiving the symbolic function of public space. Digging into Martin Heidegger's notion of the “open” as a place of inactive potentialities, where the two essential conditions of man – animalitas and humanitas – can overlap, this paper describes the diagrammatic design approach, developed within a Design Laboratory at the Politecnico di Milano, centering on the Palace of Sports and involving a large territory all around Prishtina.