This Sarajevo Apartment is Teaching its Children What Architecture Is For.

For most of the last century, architecture in Bosnia (and the entire former Yugoslavia) was something that happened to public buildings. Cultural institutions, sports halls, housing at scale—admired from the footpath, and separate from how people lived at home. Domestic space was inherited, improvised, made do with. I grew up in that Bosnia, and the war and the long, uneven recovery that followed did little to shift it. Design there remains an abstraction for most households rather than a daily experience.

Which is what makes Treehouse Apartment feel quietly radical. Project V Architecture’s 100-square-metre retrofit sits inside an Austro-Hungarian-era courtyard block in Sarajevo, reworked for a young family. Its most surprising move is built for the children: a prefabricated Tree House in locally sourced glue-laminated spruce, made with Bosnian mass timber factory Krivaja Homes. The studio is familiar ground for Yellowtrace—we covered their Grand Prix-winning Zemlja apartment—and this second Sarajevo interior extends the same argument about local materials and local makers.

Rebuilding Post-War Sarajevo: The Sustainable and Adaptive Zemlja Apartment by Project V Architecture.

Zemlja, translating to 'earth,' 'land,' and 'country' in Bosnian, is a retrofit that aims to restore a sense of place, home, and shared identity through architectural innovation.

Perched above the courtyard as though lodged in branches, it is miniature architecture—a cross between large furniture and a small house—scaled to a child. Multiple levels, a lofted space, built-in stairs and CNC-cut openings filter light and reward climbing. Engineered with the seriousness of a building, it draws on Bosnia’s timber heritage. It also hands Sarajevo children an early education in what wood, craft and care can do—one most Bosnian adults never received.

Holding the rest of the plan together is a continuous cherry veneer element the architects describe as an inhabitable skirting board. It begins as a floor border and rises at shifting datum heights into kitchen units, benches, cupboards and wall panelling, absorbing services and storage. Read as a horizon line, the cherry ribbon is an idea about groundedness—a miniature forest wrapping the apartment, merging utility with poetics.

The hallway is treated as a place to pause rather than pass through: clay-painted, lined with flush cherry cabinetry to a 2.1-metre datum above the doorways. Each door is a cherry-clad portal into rooms of subtly different character, unified by materiality. At either end, the hall opens into two contrasting worlds—the Tree House and the calm adult living area—with sliding pocket doors to join or separate them. In the merged kitchen and living room, floor-to-ceiling linen curtains tune the space from fully enclosed to semi-sheer to open, then vanish into tall cabinetry. Here, the cherry ribbon climbs into sculptural columns framing the dining area.

House for Five Women: Architecture as a Force for Good in Post-War Bosnia.

Featuring vibrant metal facade panels painted in local workshops, the building celebrates visibility rather than concealment, offering hope through thoughtful, culturally-rooted contemporary design.

Contemporary Bosnian craft anchors each room. Zanat’s Koba Table sits in the kitchen alongside pieces by Artisan and bespoke work from independent craftspeople and ceramicists, islands around which daily life gathers. Artworks by Bosnia-based artists Muhammad Bajramović and Kemil Bekteši draw on matter tied to the region’s industrial past, threading heritage and labour through the interior. Travertine and marble line the bathrooms.

“This space is for the children and their friends—the future of our society,” say Vernes Čaušević and Lucy Dinnen of Project V Architecture. “We hope it inspires a deep appreciation for wood, craft, and sustainability.”

In a country still rebuilding, that is no small ambition.

From Bosnian Family Workshop to Design Authority, Zanat Marks a Decade of International Success.

Ten years ago, brothers Nikšić made a decision to transform their family's 105-year-old woodcarving business in Konjić into an international design phenomenon. For Dana Tomić Hughes, Zanat's success feels deeply personal.

[Images courtesy of Project V Architecture. Photography by Shantanu Starick.]