This project combined two clients and their different requests. On one side, Walter together with Normal Arhitektura decided to digitize the Parents Home as their contribution to a social good. On the other side, BIMobject contacted Walter in need of a demonstrative example project for their BIMsupply platform, which would mostly use product from bimobject.com.
Parents Home in this sense became a showcase for BIMsupply, its noble purpose becoming known to even wider audience. BIM is all about structured, accurate, reliable and accessible product information. The management of the building in future will now be much easier and more productive. We take pride in being part of this wonderful story!
About the Project:
The Parents’ House was designed to provide accommodation and support for children who are struggling with cancer, and their families who live outside of the capital Sarajevo. The Association “Heart for Kids with Cancer in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina” began the project of a Parents’ House back in 2011, when a preliminary design of the Parents’ House was presented on the event of marking the International Childhood Cancer Day. After seeing coverage of this event in the media, Sarajevo-based architectural studio, NORMAL Arhitektura, got in touch with the Association and offered to do the entire project on a pro bono basis.
After many obstacles, the Association managed to resolve the administrative hurdles and construction of the building started in March 2014. The House was built with the help of friends of the children who are suffering from cancer. Thanks to the various donors who recognized the importance of this project, Bosnia and Herzegovina now has its first Parents’ House, which represents a permanent good that will be used by children with cancer and their parents, medical staff, as well as the wider community.
The Parents’ House for children suffering from cancer has 757 m², and includes: a basement, a ground floor and three upper floors with a total of 10 apartments, multi-functional room with a playground and a living room, a shared kitchen and dining room, a multi-functional hall and rooms for the Association. The building itself has Class A energy efficiency rating. The Parents’ House is a crossing of opposites: compact yet disperse, white yet colorful, small yet grandiose, it has become an iconic building of the city.
The design of the building allows the ten apartments, which are distributed on three levels, to have a public space for gathering, cooking, and eating on the ground floor, and a space for fitness, conferences, workshops and other activities in the basement. Each of the 10 apartments’ interior designs was assigned to a different architect/architectural studio, and like everything else in this project, from the very beginning until the end, this too was done pro bono. Thus, the five-story building was built entirely from the donations that parents and architects collected, with the desire of turning this dream into reality.
The Sarajevo University Clinical Centre provided land for the construction, architects and engineers worked pro bono, and the many volunteers and people of good will donated their time to help in the building. It is also thanks to them that the Parents’ House is as beautiful as it is today.
Author: NORMAL ARHITEKTURA d.o.o., Sarajevo
