“Music staircase” in Pruščakova street, Sarajevo

Staircase in the Pruščakova street was conceived as a “Music staircase”, and its design was inspired by the proximity of the cultural centre “Sloga”, an iconic venue in which the famous r’n’r musicians started their careers in the 1960s and 1970s. Project brief originally prioritized the landslide stabilization and was limited to the basic design requirements, without including additional design challenges.

The key feature of the staircase is the 60 cm wide and 70 m long black stripe, dancing and curving along the urban stairs, connecting city centre with up-hill residential neighbourhoods. Only after walking along the stripe one sees the most important part of this urban intervention – music boxes –or, juke boxes, each dedicated to a group or an individual artist. Each music box enables visitors to select and listen to some of the most important songs by the selected artists while reading their short biographies.

The “Music Staircase” is the third in line of the small scale open public space redesign projects, along with the “Poetry staircase” in Kaptol street and the “Grand park” staircase, which are located in the central part of the city of Sarajevo, within the 200 meters distance, in which the Firma architects decided to increase their designers’ stake by creating the thematic open public spaces, thus intending to perform the strategy of urban acupuncture.