Shopping Mall Boska, Banja Luka,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1978

In 1969 big earthquake shook Banja Luka and one of the major landmarks, residential building called Titanic (obtained the name because of it’s length), build short while after the Second World War, suffered a great loss. There were several casualties and most of the building was destroyed. In 1978, on the same spot, new department store Boska was built.
The name Boska derives from the regional part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is called Bosanska Krajin.

Boska was built as a cutting edge department store and today it is one of the last existing shopping malls (not yet privatized) that belonged to the chain of the Yugoslav department stores. It is concrete mega structure inspired by the American (shopping mall) architecture from 60’. It was designed without any direct formal relationship to the local heritage and it was part of the larger project called City Centre 1 that was commissioned after the earthquake.

Today this place is like a time vortex, absolutely everything remains the same as it was 30 years ago, though there are few shoppers and very little goods. Most of the citizens of Banja Luka speak about Boska as if it is a ghost.
But on the other hand, people who still work in Boska refer to it with lots of passion and happily remember the “glory days” when the department store was fully functional.

Boska is going trough an illness that has infected most of the former Eastern block. The introduction of private ownership used to be almost impossible under communist rule and today privatisation of the giant combines is agonizing process that badly effects lot of people.
It is matter of months if not even days before Boska completely disappears.